m  sc 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


GIFT  OF 

William  E.   Colby 


THE  BEACON  BIOGRAPHIES 

EDITED   BY 

M.  A.  DzWOLFE  HOWE 


DANIEL   WEBSTER 

BY 

NORMAN  HAPGOOD 


/Eminent  Amraiimiis  , 


^^jfflfogJy- 

^f^^^^^^^^J^ 


DANIEL    WEBSTER 


NORMAN  HAPGOOD 


BOSTON 

SMALL,  MAYNARD  &  COMPANY 
MDCCCXCIX 


Copyright, 
By  Small,  Maynard  &  Company 


Entered  at  Stationers'  Hall 


Press  of 
George  H.  Ellis,  Boston 


GIFT 


The  photogravure  used  as  a  frontispiece 
to  this  volume  is  from  a  daguerreotype  taken 
April  29,  1850,  by  Josiah  J.  Hawes,  Bos 
ton.  The  present  engraving  is  by  John 
Andrew  &  Son,  Boston. 


M870019 


PREFACE. 

A  very  short  biography,  which  aims  to 
sketch  the  most  important  features  of  Daniel 
Webster7 s  story  for  the  general  reader,  pre 
sumably  aims  particularly  at  presenting  tivo 
aspects  of  his  mind  and  character,  one  of 
which  shows  why  he  is  so  large  a  figure  in 
a  vital  period  of  American  history,  ichile 
the  otJier  explains  what  kept  his  from  being 
the  greatest  name  on  the  records  of  the  Neio 
World.  The  sources  of  information  about 
his  genius  are  sufficient  and  exact.  That 
story  lies  written  in  his  works  and  in  the 
history  of  his  country.  On  the  other  hand, 
he  has  been  unfortunate  in  those  of  his  biog 
raphers  who  might  have  left  a  speaking 
image  of  the  man.  Mr.  Curtis,  the  author 
of  the  official  life,  has  loyally  blurred  the 
portrait.  Peter  Harvey,  in  his  little  book 
of  intimate  impressions,  shows  his  own 
mind  too  small  to  reflect,  without  distortion, 
the  features  of  his  great  friend.  Mr.  Lan- 
man,  who  has  left  some  facts,  was  hardly 
an  observer.  Of  course,  the  admirers  of 


viii  PEEFACE 

every  genius  sigh  over  the  absence  of  a  Bos- 
well;  but  probably  few  need  one  more  than 
Webster.  The  best  short  life  of  him,  that 
written  by  Senator  Lodge,  makes  a  judi 
cious  use  of  the  materials  available.  The 
solidest  critical  estimate  is  tJiat  of  James 
Parton.  The  most  famous  attacks  are 
those  of  Theodore  Parker  and  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson. 

In  this  brief  narrative  the  attempt  is  to 
name  icithout  elaboration  the  more  difficult 
and  abstract  accomplishments  of  Webster, 
in  the  realms  of  law,  finance,  and  diplo 
macy,  and  to  give  more  fully  the  simpler 
and  more  popular  feats,  which  happen  in 
this  case  to  be  the  greatest  and  the  most  pro 
foundly  influential.  In  treating  his  per 
sonal  life  and  private  traits,  the  desire  has 
been  to  select  what  is  reasonably  beyond  dis 
pute,  and  what  at  the  same  time  is  dis 
tinctly  causal  in  its  relation  to  his  public 
history. 

NORMAN  KAPGOOD. 
NEW  YORK,  April  3,  1899. 


CHRONOLOGY. 

1782 

January  18.  Daniel  Webster  was  born  at 
Salisbury,  N.H. 

1794 
Spring.  Entered  Exeter  Academy. 

1797 
August.  Entered  Dartmouth  College. 

1800 

July  4.  Delivered  to  the  citizens  of  Han 
over  his  first  public  oration. 

1801 

August.  Received  his  degree. 
Winter.  Was  made  schoolmaster  at  Frye- 
burg,  Me. 

1804 

July  20.  Went  to  Boston,    and  entered 
the  law  office  of  Christopher  Gore. 

1805 
March.  Admitted  to  the  Boston  bar. 

1806 

April.  His  father  died.     Daniel  assumed 
his  debts.     Lived  in  Boscawen,  K.H. 


x  CHRONOLOGY 

1807 

Autumn.  Transferred  his  law  business  to 
his  brother  Ezekiel,  and  removed  to 
Portsmouth,  KH. 

1808 

June  24.  Married  Miss  Grace  Fletcher, 
of  Salisbury.  Published  a  speech  against 
the  Embargo  of  1807. 

1812 

July  4.  Addressed  the  Washington  Be 
nevolent  Society  at  Portsmouth. 
August.  Sent  as  a  delegate  to  the  Buck 
ingham    County   Assembly,    and   wrote 
the  "Rockingham  Memorial.'7 
Fall.  Elected  to  the  Thirteenth  Congress. 

1813 

May.  Took  his  seat,  and  was  placed  on 
the  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations. 

1813-14 

Winter.  Admitted  to  the  bar  of  the  Su 
preme  Court. 

1814 

January  14.  Made  a  speech  against  an 
enlistment  bill. 


CHRONOLOGY  xi 

1814  (continued) 

September.  Eeturned  to  Washington  for 
the  extra  session  called. 

1816 

June.  Removed  to  Boston  from  Ports 
mouth. 

December.  Called  back  to  Boston  from 
Washington  by  illness  of  his  daughter 
Grace,  who  died. 

1817 

March  4.  The  Fourteenth  Congress  was 
ended,  and  Webster  temporarily  retired 
from  public  life. 

September.  First  argument  in  the  Dart 
mouth  College  case  in  New  Hampshire. 

1818 

March  10.  Final  argument  in  the  same 
case  before  the  Supreme  Court  at  Wash 
ington. 

1820 

Summer  &  Fall.  Assisted  in  revising  the 
Constitution  of  Massachusetts. 
December  22.  Delivered   the    Plymouth 
oration. 


xii  CHKONOLOGY 

1822 

Nominated  to  Congress  from  Boston  dis 
trict. 

1823 
December.  Took  his  seat  in  "Washington. 

1824 

January  19.  Delivered  a  speech  in  favor 
of  appointing  commissioner  to  Greece, 
March.  Delivered  a  speech  against  the 
Tariff  of  1824. 

December  18.  His  youngest  son  Charles 
died. 

1824-25 

Winter.  Delivered   speech    on    national 
Cumberland  road. 

1825 

June  17.  Delivered  the  first  Bunker  Hill 
oration. 

1826 

August  2.  Eulogy  on  Adams  and  Jeffer 
son. 

1827 

June.  Accepted  United  States  senator- 
ship  from  Massachusetts. 


CHRONOLOGY  xiii 

1828 

January  21.  Mrs.  Webster  died. 
April.  Delivered  a  speech  for  the  benefit 
of  surviving  officers  of  the  Revolution. 
May.  Delivered  famous  speech  on  the 
Tariff  of  1828,  and  voted  for  the  "Bill 
of  Abominations.'7 

November  12.  Delivered  an  oration  in 
Boston  on  "Science  in  Connection  with 
the  Mechanic  Arts." 

1829 

December  12.  Married  Miss  Caroline  Le 
Roy,  of  Kew  York. 

1830 

January  20.  First  answer  to  Hayne. 
January  26.  The    second    and    famous 
"Reply  to  Hayne. " 

1833 

February  8.  Supported  the  i '  Force  Bill ' ? 
in  a  noted  speech. 

February  16.  Replied  to  Calhoun's  nulli 
fication  argument  with  the  able  speech 
known  as  "The  Constitution  not  a  Com 
pact  between  Sovereign  States. " 


xiv  CHRONOLOGY 

1833  (continued) 
Summer.  Made  a  tour  through  the  West. 

1836 

Unsuccessful    candidate    for    President, 
Massachusetts  alone  supporting  him. 

1837 

March  15.  Made    a    famous    speech    at 
Niblo's  Garden. 
Summer.  Made  a  second  tour  of  the  West. 

1839 

January.  Be- elected  to  the  Senate. 
Summer.  Went  to  England  as  a  private 
citizen. 
December.  Returned  to  America. 

1841 

February  22.  Resigned  his  seat    in  the 
Senate. 

March  4.  Accepted     Secretaryship     of 
State. 

1841-42 
Winter.    u  Ashburton  Treaty." 

1843 

May.  Resigned    his    Secretaryship,    and 
went  to  Marshfield  for  the  summer. 


CHBOSTOLOGY  xv 

1843 
June  17.  Second  Bunker  Hill  oration. 

1844-45 

Winter.  Again  elected  Senator  from 
Massachusetts  upon  the  resignation  of 
Choate. 

1846 

February.  Attacked  by  C.  J.  Ingersoll, 
of  Philadelphia. 

April  6,  7.  Speech  on  "Ashburton 
Treaty. " 

1847 
Summer.  Made  a  tour  of  Southern  States. 

1848 

April  28.  His  daughter,  Mrs.  Appleton, 
died  in  Boston. 

May  3.  Burial  of  his  second  son,  Major 
Edward  Webster,  brought  back  from 
Mexico. 

September  1.  Speech  at  Marshfield  on  the 
nomination  of  General  Taylor. 

1850 

March  7.  Delivered  the  great  "7th  of 
March  "  speech. 


xvi  CHRONOLOGY 

1850  (continued) 

July  23.  Accepted  again  the  Secretary 
ship  of  State,  and  resigned  his  seat  in 
the  Senate. 

December  21.  Eebuked  Austria  through 
the  "Hulseman  Letter.7' 

1852 

May.  Thrown    from    his    carriage   near 
Marshfield,  and  seriously  hurt. 
Summer.  Again   an  unsuccessful    candi 
date  for  the  Presidency. 
July.  Came  to  Boston. 
August.  Returned  to  Washington. 
September  8.  Returned  to  Marshfield. 
October  24.  Daniel  Webster  died. 
October  29.  Plain  but  public  funeral. 


DANIEL    WEBSTER 


DANIEL   WEBSTER. 

I, 

A  BIOGRAPHY  of  the  greatest  Amer 
ican  orator  is  mainly  the  story  of  his 
developing  genins  and  his  unfolding 
character.  His  life  contained  few  acci 
dents.  Up  to  the  age  of  fifty  we  merely 
watch  the  expansion  of  his  powers,  the 
mastery  of  law  and  politics,  the  victory 
over  the  ordinary  obstacles  of  a  progress 
from  obscurity  to  fame,  from  a  border 
farm  to  the  tribunal  on  which  he  stood 
as  the  strongest  defender  of  the  Consti 
tution  and  its  liberties.  Then,  after 
the  summit  has  been  reached,  we  trace 
the  barely  perceptible  decline,  equally 
caused  from  within,  on  this  descent, 
certain  traits  in  the  character  gaining 
the  ascendency  over  the  healthy  genius. 
The  story  is  as  significant  as  a  high  im 
aginative  drama,  because  it  is  a  single 
and  tremendous  progress,  the  flowering 
and  partial  fading  of  a  powerful  soul, — 


2  DANIEL  WEBSTEB 

a  rising  in  force  like  the  tide,  and  then 
the  gradual  ebb  until  death.  With  its 
touch  of  sadness,  it  is  nevertheless  an 
inspiring  and  uplifting  story,  because 
the  brilliant  powers  and  priceless  results 
stand  out  eternal,  even  where  they  were 
dimmed  in  the  short  space  of  a  life. 
Probably  no  other  modern  orator  has 
left  so  many  words  that  live ;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  no  other  modern  orator 
has  moved  more  deeply  listening  bodies 
of  men.  His  words  last  from  their  solid 
thought  and  chaste  eloquence,  even  now 
that  their  work  is  accomplished.  He 
lives  not,  like  so  many  great  orators,  as 
a  mere  name,  but  in  some  of  the  most 
popular  passages  in  his  country's  liter 
ature.  When  the  lines  of  the  conflict 
were  drawing,  this  majestic  speaker 
pierced  the  issues  to  the  heart,  and  gave 
to  the  truth  the  encouragement  of 
moving  explanation.  The  principles  of 
union  came  to  the  reflective  country  lad 
from  Hamilton,  Adams,  and  Washing- 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  3 

ton ;  they  developed  in  the  lawyer  and 
statesman  under  the  guidance  of  the 
great  jurists,  Marshall  and  Story;  but 
Webster  alone  could  send  them  through 
the  battle  in  words  that  blazed  with 
truth  and  courage  alike  for  the  leaders 
and  the  people.  The  orator  educated, 
warmed,  and  invigorated  the  nation; 
and  the  phrases  of  his  speeches  formed 
the  rock  on  which  his  country  stood  in 
the  hour  of  trial.  If  before  the  end  his 
own  heart  grew  faint,  after  his  death  a 
young  nation  fighting  for  truths  new  in 
the  world  was  still  sheltered  by  his 
words, —  "  liberty  and  union,  now  and 
forever,  one  and  inseparable. " 
-  The  story  of  this  life  begins  among  the 
early  New  England  hardships,  in  which 
the  country  first  matured  its  strength. 
The  Websters,  of  Scotch  extraction,  had 
been  in  America  since  about  1636  j  and 
Ebenezer,  DanieFs  father,  had  fought 
his  way  through  the  French  Wai's,  and 
built,  near  the  banks  of  the  Merrimack  in 


4  DANIEL  WEBSTEB 

the  town  of  Salisbury,  New  Hampshire, 
the  first  log  cabin  in  the  vicinity.  When 
the  war  for  independence  broke  out, 
Captain  Webster  left  his  farm  and  mill, 
rallied  his  neighbors,  and  fought  with 
Washington  to  the  end, —  a  strong  man, 
trusted,  fearless,  tall  and  lithe,  dark  as 
an  Indian,  knowing  little  of  books,  but 
reading  the  best  he  could  find  by  the 
light  of  the  fire  in  his  log  cabin  on 
winter  nights.  His  second  wife,  Abigail 
Eastman,  the  mother  of  Daniel  and  his 
only  whole  brother,  Ezekiel,  was  of 
Welsh  extraction,  and  a  thorough  daugh 
ter  of  New  England,  one  of  a  race  as 
sturdy  as  her  husband's.  Of  the  nine 
other  sons  and  daughters  of  the  two 
marriages,  Ezekiel  alone  counted  for 
much  in  the  life  of  Daniel. 

When  his  youngest  and  most  gifted 
son  was  born  on  Jan.  18,  1782,  Ebenezer 
had  left  his  cabin  for  a  house.  His 
mountain  farm  in  New  Hampshire  stood 
within  sight  of  the  lofty  peaks  of  Kear- 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  5 

sarge  and  Washington,  and  one  field 
contained  a  hundred  acres  of  level 
meadow.  Always  increasing  in  the  re 
spect  of  his  neighbors,  he  became  in 
turn  legislator  and  judge.  His  convic 
tions  were  born  of  the  conditions  of  his 
time.  As  the  battle  for  free  worship 
had  been  won,  his  Puritanism  was  broad 
and  gentle  ;  and,  as  the  battle  for  nation 
ality  was  still  raging,  his  Federalism, 
with  its  belief  in  every  centralizing  ten 
dency  of  the  newly  adopted  Constitution, 
was  harsh  and  narrow.  To  him  the 
French  Revolution  was  all  wickedness, 
and  Thomas  Jefferson  an  object  to  abhor. 
Once,  when  he  believed  himself  dying, 
away  from  home,  he  insisted  on  being 
moved,  saying  that  he  "was  born  a 
Federalist  and  always  lived  a  Federalist, 
and  would  not  die  in  any  but  a  Federal 
ist  town." 

Daniel  was  born  two  years  after  Eze- 
kiel,  who  was  called  the  most  beautiful 
man  of  his  time.  His  manners  were  dis- 


6  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

tinguished,  and  he  was  vigorous,  indus 
trious,  and  persevering.  Daniel  himself 
was  slight  and  delicate,  andv  his  poor 
health  and  distaste  for  work  allowed  him 
to  loaf  and  reflect.  His  demeanor  was 
impressive,  dignified,  unusual ;  and  his 
costume  is  said  to  have  been  chosen 
always  with  a  quick  eye  for  the  best 
effect.  Although  he  rode  to  plough, 
curried  horses,  and  tended  the  saw-mill, 
his  instinct  was  to  catch  trout,  shoot 
squirrels,  and  fight  cocks.  This  story 
floats  about  the  Salisbury  neighborhood. 
Their  father  had  given  Zeke  and  Daniel 
directions  to  do  a  piece  of  work  during 
his  temporary  absence ;  but,  on  his  re 
turn,  he  found  the  labor  unperformed, 
and  with  a  frown  questioned  the  boys. 
"  What  have  you  been  doing,  Ezekiel  $ ?7 
" Nothing,  sir."  "Well,  Daniel,  what 
have  you  been  doing  T?  "  Helping 
Zeke,  sir.'7 

At  a  log  school-house  half  a  mile  from 
the  Webster  farm,  and  then  at  another, 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  7 

over  two  miles  away,  Daniel  picked  up 
a  slight  amount  of  information.  Master 
Tappan,  the  boy's  teacher,  was  quoted 
thus  in  a  Boston  newspaper  at  about  the 
time  of  Webster's  death:  " Daniel  was 
always  the  brightest  boy  in  the  school, 
and  Ezekiel  the  next ;  but  Daniel  was 
much  quicker  at  his  studies  than  his 
brother.  He  would  learn  more  in  five 
minutes  than  another  boy  in  five  hours. 
One  Saturday,  I  remember,  I  held  up  a 
handsome  new  jack-knife  to  the  scholars, 
and  said  the  boy  who  would  commit  to 
memory  the  greatest  number  of  verses  in 
the  Bible  by  Monday  morning  should 
have  it.  Many  of  the  boys  did  well ; 
but,  when  it  came  to  Daniel's  turn  to 
recite,  I  found  that  he  had  committed  so 
much  that,  after  hearing  him  repeat 
some  sixty  or  seventy  verses,  I  was 
obliged  to  give  up,  he  telling  me  that 
there  were  several  chapters  yet  that  he 
had  learned.  Daniel  got  that  jack- 
knife."  The  boy's  real  education  was 


8  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

in  his  father's  saw-mill,  where  he  read 
and  reread  a  few  good  books  as  the  logs 
passed  through.  At  Salisbury  where  he 
spent  most  of  his  boyhood,  three  miles 
from  his  birthplace  at  Elms  Farm,  he 
paid  to  the  village  storekeeper,  who  was 
also  his  schoolmaster,  the  only  twenty- 
five  cents  he  possessed  for  a  handkerchief 
with  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  printed  upon  it.  He  learned  his 
tory  from  an  old  British  sailor  in  the 
vicinity,  from  men  who  had  fought  Ind 
ians  and  women  who  had  heard  their 
midnight  yell.  Barefoot,  dressed  in  his 
mother's  homespun  garments,  he  went 
about  the  country  and  recited  poetry  as 
he  walked,  so  that  the  neighbors  some 
times  stopped  to  listen. 

His  own  view  of  the  value  of  being 
born  in  such  a  time  at  such  a  place  was 
given  many  years  later,  when  he  spoke 
of  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims:  "The 
morning  that  beamed  on  the  first  night 
of  their  repose  saw  the  Pilgrims  already 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  9 

at  home  in  their  country.  There  were 
political  institutions  and  civil  liberty  and 
religious  worship.  Poetry  has  fancied 
nothing,  in  the  wanderings  of  heroes, 
so  distinct  and  characteristic.  Here  was 
man,  indeed,  unprotected,  and  unpro 
vided  for,  on  the  shore  of  a  rude  and 
fearful  wilderness  5  but  it  was  politic, 
intelligent,  and  educated  man.  Every 
thing  was  civilized  but  the  physical 
world.  Institutions,  containing  in  sub 
stance  all  that  ages  had  done  for  human 
government,  were  organized  in  a  forest. 
Cultivated  mind  was  to  act  on  unculti 
vated  nature ;  and,  more  than  all,  a 
government  and  a  country  were  to  com 
mence,  with  the  very  first  foundations 
made  under  the  divine  light  of  the 
Christian  religion.  Happy  auspices  of 
a  happy  futurity !  Who  would  wish 
that  his  country's  existence  had  other 
wise  begun?  Who  would  desire  the 
power  of  going  back  to  the  ages  of 

Who  would  wish  for  an  origin 


10  DANIEL  WEBSTEB 

obscured  in  the  darkness  of  antiquity1? 
Who  would  wish  for  other  emblazoning 
of  his  country's  heraldry  or  other  orna 
ments  of  her  genealogy  than  to  be  able 
to  say  that  her  first  existence  was  with 
intelligence,  her  first  breath  the  inspira 
tion  of  liberty,  her  first  principle  the 
truth  of  divine  religion  ? ' ' 

As  Daniel  spent  his  boyhood  contem 
plating  nature,  listening  to  anecdotes 
and  doctrine  from  men  and  women  who 
had  lived  through  the  nation's  birth, 
and,  doubtless,  silently  practising  the  gift 
of  statement  as  the  logs  went  through  the 
mill,  what  books  he  had  became  his  inti 
mates  ;  and  he  seldom  walked  without 
one.  Pope's  Essay  on  Man  he  knew  en 
tire,  as  he  knew  most  of  Watts' s  hymns 
and  much  of  the  Bible.  Hudibras,  the 
Spectator,  Pope's  Homer,  were  among  the 
earliest  books ;  and  they  were  followed 
by  Cicero,  when  he  began  to  study  Latin. 
Shakspere  and  Milton,  who  seemed  to  be 
woven  into  his  thought  at  his  greatest 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  11 

period,  came  later  5  and  he  studied  Sal- 
lust,  Caesar,  Homer,  and  Demosthenes, 
when  he  felt  that  he  ought  to  know 
them. 

At  this  boyhood  period  he  took  life 
freely  and  jovially ;  and,  as  he  tells  of 
himself,  his  sense  of  fun  fed  itself  even 
on  the  misfortunes  of  others.  His  rollick 
ing  laugh  has  left  its  memory  with  num 
bers  who  knew  him.  He  took  things 
lightly,  never  strained  himself,  and  con 
tentedly  observed  what  was  in  the  air 
about  him.  The  mountains  and  the 
beasts  of  the  farm  and  forest  spoke  to 
him,  and  he  never  forgot  their  meaning. 
He  was  already  germinating  that  feeling 
for  big  things,  for  health  and  normal 
happiness,  for  the  country  in  which  he 
lived,  on  which  he  later  built  so  large 
an  argument.  Some  who  noticed  his  idle 
love  of  play  believed  he  would  come  to 
nothing,  and  the  wittiest  of  his  brothers 
said  that  Daniel  needed  a  college  edu 
cation  to  make  him  equal  to  the  rest. 


12  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

Others,  struck  by  his  deep-set  eyes,  noble 
carriage,  rich  and  flexible  voice,  quick 
memory,  and  alert  interest,  prophesied 
that  the  future  would  know  of  him. 
He  was  then  tall,  and  so  thin  that  he 
weighed  but  one  hundred  and  twenty 
pounds ;  but  his  look  already  promised 
something  of  the  majestic  weight  of  later 
years. 

Nothing  could  have  more  delighted 
the  boy,  fond  of  knowledge  and  thought, 
than  the  father's  announcement  that  he 
was  to  go  to  college.  Poorly  prepared 
as  he  was  in  many  ways,  he  had  at  least 
the  habit  of  serious  reflection  and  the 
power  of  quick  acquisition  ;  and,  after  a 
few  months  at  Phillips  Exeter  Academy 
and  a  little  private  instruction  near 
home,  he  entered  Dartmouth  in  1797. 
He  rapidly  became  known  for  profi 
ciency  in  the  things  he  liked,  but  never 
forced  himself  to  disagreeable  tasks. 
"  When  I  was  at  school/7  he  said  forty 
years  later,  in  an  after-dinner  speech, 


DANIEL  WEBSTEE  13 

"I  felt  exceedingly  obliged  to  Homer's 
messengers  for  the  exact  literal  fidelity 
with  which  they  delivered  their  mes 
sages.  The  seven  or  eight  lines  of  good 
Homeric  Greek  in  which  they  had  re 
ceived  the  commands  of  Agamemnon  or 
Achilles  they  recited  to  whomsoever  the 
message  was  to  be  carried  ;  and  as  they 
repeated  them  verbatim,  sometimes  twice 
or  thrice,  it  saved  me  the  trouble  of 
learning  so  much  Greek. "  His  attitude 
toward  mathematics  was  similar  ;  but  he 
read  widely  in  history,  literature,  and  a 
few  Latin  authors,  conducted  a  local 
paper  for  a  time  to  pay  his  board,  and 
became  known  for  his  oratory.  As,  ac 
cording  to  his  own  testimony,  he  was  too 
shy  to  speak  at  Exeter,  he  must  have 
gained  confidence  rapidly  after  mixing 
with  many  men.  His  maturer  taste  was 
so  severe  that  he  looked  upon  these 
college  declamations  without  mercy, 
although,  flamboyant  as  they  were,  they 
contained  more  fundamental  thought 


14  DANIEL  WEBSTEK 

and  more  vigorous  language  than  is 
usual  in  the  Junior  year.  "  While 
in  college/'  he  tells  us,  "I  delivered 
two  or  three  occasional  addresses,  which 
were  published.  I  trust  they  are  for 
gotten.  They  were  in  very  bad  taste. 
I  had  not  then  learned  that  all  true 
power  in  writing  is  in  the  idea,  not  in 
the  style." 

As  the  first  experiments  of  a  great 
orator  interest  the  world,  one  of  the  most 
lurid  passages  in  his  Junior  Fourth  of 
July  oration  has  become  rather  widely 
known.  ' '  Columbia, ?  ?  he  cried,  l '  stoops 
not  to  tyrants.  Her  spirit  will  never 
cringe  to  France.  Neither  a  supercilious 
five-headed  directory  nor  the  gasconad 
ing  pilgrim  of  Egypt  will  ever  dictate 
terms  to  sovereign  America  !  The  thun 
der  of  our  cannon  shall  insure  the  per 
formance  of  our  treaties  and  fulminate 
destruction  on  Frenchmen  till  the  ocean 
is  crimsoned  with  blood  and  gorged  with 
pirates."  What  is  much  more  remark- 


DANIEL  WEBSTEE  IS 

able  is  that  the  boy  of  eighteen  could 
also  write  like  this:  u~No  sooner  was 
peace  restored  with  England  (the  first 
grand  article  of  which  was  the  acknowl 
edgment  of  our  independence)  than  the 
old  system  of  Confederation,  dictated  at 
first  by  necessity  and  adopted  for  the 
purposes  of  the  moment,  was  found  in 
adequate  to  the  government  of  an  exten 
sive  empire.  Under  a  full  conviction  of 
this  we  then  saw  the  people  of  these 
States  engaged  in  a  transaction  which  is 
undoubtedly  the  greatest  approximation 
towards  human  perfection  the  political 
world  had  ever  yet  witnessed,  and 
which,  perhaps,  will  forever  stand  in 
the  history  of  mankind  without  a  par 
allel.  A  great  republic  composed  of 
different  States,  whose  interest  in  all  re 
spects  could  not  be  perfectly  compatible, 
then  came  deliberately  forward,  dis 
carded  one  system  of  government  and 
adopted  another  without  the  loss  of  one 
man's  blood. "  In  verse  also,  which  was 


16  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

commonplace  enough,  he  suggested  the 
woes  of  war,  and  advised  his  country  to 
give  thanks  for  peace. 

At  Daniel's  instigation,  during  his 
Junior  year  his  parents,  already  bur 
dened  with  a  mortgaged  farm,  decided 
to  send  Ezekiel  also  to  Dartmouth,  and 
trust  the  boys  for  future  help.  Daniel, 
royally  as  he  expected  and  demanded 
much  from  others,  was  grateful  and 
sympathetic ;  and  he  made  part  of  the 
sacrifice  required  for  his  brother's  edu 
cation  at  college,  which  began  in  the 
year  of  Daniel's  graduation  with  the 
class  of  1801.  After  this  event  he  en 
tered  a  country  law  office  near  home, 
but  soon  left  it,  in  fulfilment  of  his 
promise  to  help  in  EzekiePs  support, 
and  went  off  to  the  village  of  Fryeburg 
in  Maine  to  teach  school  by  day  and 
copy  deeds  by  night.  In  a  few  months 
he  was  able  to  return  to  Salisbury  and 
continue  reading  law,  choosing  books  of 
general  legal  philosophy,  like  Montes- 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  17 

quieu  and  Blackstone,  or  of  history, 
like  Hume  and  Robertson,  and  formu 
lating  later  a  doctrine  that  it  was  use 
less  to  attack  such  an  abstract  person  as 
Coke  until  the  path  had  first  been  made 
easy  by  some  one  as  attractive  as  Espi- 
nasse.  He  preferred  to  travel  by  pleas 
ant  paths,  but  he  travelled  far. 

His  poverty  did  not  weigh  upon  him. 
While  he  was  teaching  school  and  copy 
ing  deeds,  he  wrote  thus  to  one  of  his 
friends:  "You  will  naturally  inquire 
how  I  prosper  in  the  article  of  cash. 
Finely  !  finely  !  I  came  here  in  January 
with  a  horse,  watch,  etc.,  and  a  few  ras 
cally  counters  in  my  pocket.  Was  soon 
obliged  to  sell  my  horse,  and  live  on  the 
proceeds.  Still  straightened  for  cash,  I 
sold  my  watch  and  made  a  shift  to  get 
home,  where  my  friends  supplied  me 
with  another  horse  and  another  watch. 
My  horse  is  sold  again;  and  my  watch 
goes,  I  expect,  this  week.  Thus  you  see 
how  I  lay  up  cash. ?  ?  To  another  friend, 


18  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

however,  he  suggests  that  he  did  deny 
himself  some  pleasures  from  economy. 
" Perhaps/'  he  wrote,  "you  thought,  as 
I  did,  that  a  dozen  dollars  would  slide 
out  of  the  pocket  in  a  Commencement 
jaunt  much  easier  than  they  would  slide 
in  again  after  you  got  home.  That  was 
the  exact  reason  why  I  was  not  there. 
...  I  flatter  myself  that  none  of  my 
friends  ever  thought  me  greatly  ab 
sorbed  in  the  sin  of  avarice ;  yet  I  as 
sure  you,  Jem,  that  in  these  days  of 
poverty  I  look  upon  a  round  dollar  with 
a  great  deal  of  complacency.  These 
rascal  dollars  are  so  necessary  to  the 
comfort  of  life  that,  next  to  a  fine  wife, 
they  are  most  essential,  and  their  acqui 
sition  an  object  of  prime  importance. 
O  Bingham,  how  blessed  it  would  be 
to  retire  with  a  decent,  clever  bag  of 
Eixes  to  a  pleasant  country  town,  and 
follow  one's  own  inclination  without 
being  shackled  by  the  duties  of  a  pro 
fession  ! ?? 


DANIEL  WEBSTEE  19 

In  1804  he  left  Ms  native  New  Hamp 
shire  town,  and  entered  the  office  of 
Christopher  Gore,  a  scholarly  lawyer 
and  statesman  of  Boston,  soon  to  be 
chosen  governor  of  Massachusetts.  Under 
his  guidance  Webster  read  wisely  and 
much.  A  glimpse  into  the  young  man's 
democratic  feelings,  which  never  left 
him,  is  given  in  this  extract  from,  a  letter 
of  that  year:  " Jerome,  the  brother  of 
the  emperor  of  the  Gauls,  is  here.  Every 
day  you  may  see  him  whisking  along 
Cornhill,  with  the  true  French  air,  with 
his  wife  by  his  side.  The  lads  say  that 
they  intend  to  prevail  on  American 
misses  to  receive  company  in  future 
after  the  manner  of  Jerome's  wife  ;  that 
is,  in  bed.  The  gentlemen  of  Boston 
(i.e.,  we  Feds)  treat  Monsieur  with  cold 
and  distant  respect.  They  feel,  and 
every  honest  man  feels,  indignant  at 
seeing  this  lordly  grasshopper,  this  pup 
pet  in  prince's  clothes,  dashing  through 
the  American  cities,  luxuriously  rioting 


20  DAKIEL  WEBSTEB 

on  the  property  of  Dutch  mechanics  or 
Swiss  peasants.'7  While  he  was  quietly 
reading  law  and  observing  men,  a  hard 
problem  suddenly  crossed  his  path.  To 
lighten  the  pecuniary  hardships  of  Eben- 
ezer  Webster,  who  had  served  since  1791 
as  judge  in  a  local  court,  his  associates, 
near  the  end  of  1804,  offered  to  the  old 
man  for  Daniel  the  office  of  clerk  of 
court,  with  a  salary  large  enough  to 
raise  the  whole  family  to  comfort.  Daniel 
went  to  Mr.  Gore,  radiant  with  his  fort 
une.  Hard-headed  Mr.  Gore  coldly 
told  him  he  was  not  made  to  be  a  clerk. 
Daniel  started  home  at  once  to  break  the 
news  of  his  declination  to  his  parents. 
His  father  was  aghast.  That  his  son 
should  sacrifice  the  ease  of  all  his  kin  to 
vague  prospects  of  future  greatness  left 
him  almost  dumb.  "Well,  my  son," 
he  exclaimed,  "your  mother  has  always 
said  that  you  would  come  to  something 
or  nothing.  She  was  not  sure  which.  I 
think  you  are  now  about  settling  that 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  21 

doubt  for  her."     He  never  mentioned 
the  subject  again. 

The  next  year  Daniel,  after  his  admis 
sion  to  the  Boston  bar,  came  to  Boscawen, 
near  Salisbury;  for  his  father's  end  was 
evidently  near.  When  the  brave  old 
man  died,  Daniel,  in  1807,  turned  over 
his  practice  to  Zeke,  and  went  to  Ports 
mouth,  a  flourishing  town,  where  his 
talents  brought  him  rapidly  in  contact 
with  some  of  the  best  legal  minds  of  the 
country,  especially  with  Jeremiah  Mason, 
who  used  to  win  all  his  cases, — a  gigantic 
body,  with  a  mind  so  penetrating  and 
firm  that  Mr.  Webster  said  in  later  years 
that  not  even  Marshall  surpassed  Mason 
in  original  power,  however  superior  the 
great  chief  justice  might  be  in  training. 
Mr.  Webster  tells  us  that  Mason's  success 
with  juries  first  taught  him  to  drop  all 
high-sounding  phrases  and  talk  in  simple 
language  straight  at  the  minds  before 
him.  The  trend  of  his  own  taste  was 
already  strong  in  that  direction,  but  he 


22  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

learned  from  Mason  as  he  learned  from 
every  strong  man  lie  met. 

The  young  man's  strides  upward,  both 
in  law  and  in  oratory,  were  very  rapid. 
His  appearance  at  this  stage  —  the  look 
and  bearing  which  were  always  his, 
powerful  allies  —  is  described  by  a  num 
ber  of  keen  witnesses:  "When  Mr. 
Webster  began  to  speak,  his  voice  was 
low,  his  head  was  sunk  upon  his  breast, 
his  eyes  were  fixed  upon  the  floor,  and 
he  moved  his  feet  incessantly,  backward 
and  forward,  as  if  trying  to  secure  a 
firmer  position.  His  voice  soon  in 
creased  in  power  and  volume  till  it 
filled  the  whole  house.  His  attitude 
became  erect,  his  eyes  dilated,  and  his 
whole  countenance  was  radiant  with 
emotion. ? ' 

"He  was  a  black,  raven-haired  fel 
low,  with  an  eye  as  black  as  death,  and 
as  heavy  as  a  lion's, — and  no  lion  in 
Africa  ever  had  a  voice  like  him ;  and 
his  look  was  like  a  lion's, — that  same 


DANIEL  WEBSTEB  23 

heavy  look,  not  sleepy,  but  as  if  he 
didn't  care  about  anything  that  was 
going  on  about  him  or  anything  any 
where  else.  He  didn't  look  as  if  he  was 
thinking  about  anything,  but  as  if  he 
would  think  like  a  hurricane  if  he  once 
got  waked  up  to  it.  They  say  the  lion 
looks  so  when  he  is  quiet.  It  wasn't  an 
empty  look,  this  of  Webster's,  but  one 
that  didn't  seem  to  see  anything  going 
on  worth  his  while." 

This  last  is  not  unlike  the  impression 
which  Thomas  Carlyle  got  of  him  years 
after :  — 

"Not  many  days  ago  I  saw  at  break 
fast  the  notablest  of  all  your  notabilities, 
Daniel  Webster.  He  is  a  magnificent 
specimen.  You  might  say  to  all  the 
world,  <  This  is  our  Yankee  Englishman, 
such  limbs  we  make  in  Yankee  land ! ' 
As  a  logic  fencer,  or  parliamentary  Her 
cules,  one  would  be  inclined  to  back 
him  at  first  sight  against  all  the  extant 
world.  The  tanned  complexion,  that 


24  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

amorphous  crag-like  face,  the  dull  black 
eyes  under  the  precipice  of  brows,  like 
dull  anthracite  furnaces,  needing  only 
to  be  Uown,  the  mastiff  mouth  accu 
rately  closed, — I  have  not  traced  so  much 
of  silent  Berserkir  rage  that  I  remember 
in  any  man."  An  old  friend  of  his 
father's  on  meeting  the  son  once  re 
marked  :  "In  the  war  we  could  not  tell 
whether  Captain  Webster's  face  was  a 
natural  color  or  blackened  by  powder. 
You  must  be  his  son,  for  you  are  a 
cursed  sight  blacker  than  he  was  ! ??  A 
navvy  in  the  streets  of  Liverpool,  point 
ing  to  Mr.  Webster,  exclaimed,  "  There 
goes  a  king!"  James  Eussell  Lowell 
says  that  President  Tyler  in  his  carriage 
with  Webster  looked  like  a  swallow 
against  a  thunder-cloud,  and  Sydney 
Smith  called  him  a  cathedral. 

His  look,  his  voice,  his  brain,  which 
played  easily  with  large  subjects,  ab 
sorbed  rapidly,  and  seized  the  best  in 
the  minds  about  him,  brought  him  a 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  25 

success  which  soon  carried  him  to  a  still 
larger  field.  His  marriage  in  May  of 
1808  to  Grace  Fletcher  was  a  strength 
ening  influence  in  his  life ;  for  she  was 
a  woman  of  good  mind  and  strong  and 
pure  character.  His  first  interference 
in  public  matters  was  also  in  1808,  when 
he  wrote  a  pamphlet,  which  was  widely 
read,  against  the  embargo  of  the  pre 
ceding  year.  Four  years  later,  after 
keeping  away  from  politics  in  the  mean 
time,  he  delivered  a  Fourth  of  July  ad 
dress,  in  which  he  spoke  for  a  larger 
navy,  in  the  spirit  of  Washington,  elo 
quently  pictured  the  importance  of  com 
merce,  and  attacked  France  for  trying 
to  trick  us  into  a  war  with  England, 
the  result  being  that  he  was  made  a  del 
egate  to  a  convention  held  in  August 
of  1812,  by  the  people  of  Eockingham 
County,  to  oppose  the  war.  On  this  oc 
casion  he  wrote,  as  the  report  of  a  com 
mittee,  the  " Eockingham  Memorial/7  a 
work  with  which  he  was  pleased  even  at 


26  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

the  height  of  his  powers,  and  which  so 
clearly  expressed  the  Federalist  views  in 
favor  of  peace  that  the  anthor  of  it  was 
sent  by  his  party  to  the  Thirteenth  Con 
gress.  Here  he  took  his  seat  in  May, 
1813. 


II. 

So  soon  as  Webster  set  foot  in  the 
House  of  Representatives,  lie  began  to 
make  himself  felt  by  striking  at  the 
weakest  points  in  the  administration 
policy.  His  reputation  at  thirty-one 
was  already  so  high,  through  his  legal 
career,  his  occasional  addresses,  and  his 
" Buckingham  Memorial,7'  that  on  his 
entrance  the  Speaker,  Henry  Clay,  im 
mediately  put  him  on  the  Committee  of 
Foreign  Relations,  the  most  important 
of  all  the  committees  in  time  of  war, 
then  having  at  its  head  John  C.  Cal- 
houn.  Mr.  Webster's  first  resolution 
called  upon  the  administration  for  infor 
mation  regarding  the  publication  in  the 
United  States  of  Napoleon's  repeal  of 
the  French  decrees  against  American 
shipping.  Of  course,  the  object  of  this 
resolution  was  to  show  that  those  de 
crees  had  never  been  repealed,  and  that 
France,  for  its  own  benefit,  was  tricking 


28  DANIEL  WEBSTEK 

the  United  States  into  war  with  Great 
Britain.  By  this  first  resolution  Web 
ster  showed  not  only  his  lasting  faculty 
of  letting  side  issues  alone  and  striking 
hard  at  the  centre,  but  also  his  strict 
Federalism.  The  Federalists  were  op 
posed  to  the  war  ;  and,  although  the  two 
Adamses  deserted  the  party  because 
they  felt  the  strength  of  the  national 
spirit,  Daniel  Webster  stood  almost  as 
rigid  a  Federalist  as  his  father.  He  was 
not  extreme,  however,  in  the  measures 
he  advocated ;  for  he  had  already  too 
much  moderation  and  too  much  breadth 
to  approach  as  near  the  edge  of  dan 
gerous  opposition  in  war-time  as  other 
Federalists  ventured.  He  really  con 
tented  himself  with  attacking  those 
government  measures  which  might  still 
be  wisely  changed.  He  continued  his 
opposition  to  the  destructive  embargo, 
which  Calhoun  himself,  spokesman  of 
the  administration,  soon  had  to  aban 
don  to  repeal. 


DANIEL  WEBSTEB  29 

In  this  first  session  Mr.  Webster  un 
furled  many  of  the  banners  which  were 
to  be  his  standards  through  the  more 
glorious  part  of  his  career.  He  showed 
at  once  that  on  constitutional  interpreta 
tion  he  stood  for  strictness  in  upholding 
the  defensive  features  of  the  national 
government  as  well  as  for  liberality  in 
construing  its  powers.  He  believed  that 
a  tariff  for  protection  was  unconstitu 
tional,  but  he  also  believed  that  the 
government  had  a  free  hand  in  internal 
improvements.  Whatever  he  touched 
he  made  alive,  for  in  his  clear  vision  the 
legal  framework  of  an  argument  was 
always  covered  with  living  truth.  "I 
am  not  anxious/'  he  said,  in  opposing 
the  tariff,  "to  accelerate  the  approach 
of  the  period  when  the  great  mass  of 
American  labor  shall  not  find  its  em 
ployment  in  the  field ;  when  the  young 
men  of  the  country  shall  be  obliged  to 
shut  their  eyes  upon  external  nature, 
upon  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  and 


30  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

immure  themselves  in  close,  unwhole 
some  workshops ;  when  they  shall  be 
obliged  to  shut  their  ears  to  the  bleat- 
ings  of  their  own  flocks  upon  their  own 
hills,  and  to  the  voice  of  the  lark  that 
cheers  them  at  the  plough, —  that  they 
may  open  them  in  dust  and  smoke  and 
steam  to  the  perpetual  whirl  of  spools 
and  spindles  and  the  grating  of  rasps 
and  saws!"  He  spoke  for  individual 
liberty  against  President  Monroe's  con 
scription,  an  Enlistment  Bill  calling 
for  a  forced  draft ;  and  in  April,  1816, 
he  introduced  a  resolution  which  re 
vealed  a  position  in  favor  of  sound 
finance  from  which  he  never  wavered, — 
a  resolution  that  all  payments  to  the 
national  treasury  must  be  made  in 
specie  or  its  equivalent.  There  were 
then  three  parties  on  the  question  of  a 
national  bank  :  one  opposed  any  bank ; 
another,  led  by  Calhoun,  favored  a 
paper- money  institution  $  and  the  third, 
in  which  Webster  was  the  strongest  fig- 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  31 

ure,  was  for  a  bank  on  a  specie  basis. 
When  the  paper- money  institution  had 
been  defeated,  Calhoun  came  to  Webster, 
and  with  tears  in  his  eyes  begged  him  to 
allow  the  government  a  bank  on  his  own 
terms  ;  and  the  sound-money  contest  was 
won. 

One  incident  of  this  session  shows  the 
young  orator  in  the  full  possession  of 
that  independent  dignity  which  was  so 
impressive  a  feature  of  his  best  years. 
That  irritable  little  man,  John  Ran 
dolph,  of  Roanoke,  provoked  by  one  of 
his  speeches,  sent  a  challenge.  He  re 
ceived  in  reply  from  his  formidable 
looking  opponent  a  brief  note,  of  which 
the  last  half  read  :  — 

"It  is  enough  that  I  do  not  feel  my 
self  bound,  at  all  times  and  under  any 
circumstances,  to  accept  from  any  man 
who  chooses  to  risk  his  own  life  an  invi 
tation  of  this  sort ;  although  I  shall  be 
always  prepared  to  repel  in  a  suitable 


32  DANIEL  WEBSTEB 

manner  the  aggression  of  any  man  who 
may  presume  upon  such  a  refusal. 
"  Your  obedient  servant, 

"  DANIEL  WEBSTEB." 

A  growing  law  practice  brought  him 
from  Portsmouth  to  Boston  in  1816  5  and 
the  need  of  money  caused  him  to  devote 
himself  to  it,  and  retire  from  public  life 
in  1817,  at  the  end  of  his  second  term. 
Then  it  was  that  within  a  few  years  he 
completed  the  imposing  structure  of  his 
legal  fame.  Of  the  three  departments 
of  his  reputation,  oratory  of  course  is 
first,  and  probably  statesmanship  is  next ; 
but,  nevertheless,  few  lawyers,  in  the 
history  of  our  country,  have  stood  so 
high  in  the  profession.  On  his  retire 
ment  from  Congress  to  devote  himself  to 
practice,  Mr.  Webster's  position  already 
brought  him  the  best  cases,  so  that  he 
constantly  faced  the  foremost  lawyers, 
from  the  head  of  the  bar,  William  Pink- 
ney,  of  Maryland,  down ;  but  powerful 


DANIEL  WEBSTEB  33 

arguments  in  conspicuous  cases  now  rap 
idly  extended  his  fame.  Among  the  first 
was  a  criminal  mystery,  in  which  Mr. 
Webster's  shrewd  and  daring  surmises 
into  motives,  his  eloquent  defence  of 
those  surmises,  and,  above  all,  his  cross- 
examination,  in  which  keen  vision  into 
the  human  mind,  a  manner  to  inspire 
awe  and  fright,  and  the  tact  to  strike 
always  at  the  weakest  place  were  evenly 
combined,  led  a  jury  to  believe  that  the 
prosecutor,  Goodridge,  had,  for  some  un 
known  reason,  robbed  himself,  wounded 
his  own  arm  with  a  bullet,  and  then 
endeavored  to  cast  the  odium  on  the 
defendants.  Goodridge,  threatened  with 
an  action  for  malicious  prosecution,  fled. 
Twenty  years  later,  when  Webster  was 
travelling,  he  asked  for  a  drink  at  a 
tavern.  The  hand  which  held  the  glass 
shook  like  a  leaf.  Mr.  Webster  took  it, 
and  left  without  a  word.  The  man  was 
Goodridge.  From  this  case,  in  April, 
1817,  to  what  is  his  greatest  effort  in  the 


34  DANIEL  WEBSTEB 

criminal  law,  the  prosecution  of  the 
murderer  of  Captain  White  thirteen 
years  after,  he  made  some  of  the  strong 
est  jury  arguments  on  record.  The 
White  trial  was  the  first  occasion  on 
which  Mr.  Webster  pleaded  against  a 
man's  life,  and  the  opening  pages  of  that 
argument  are  probably  as  nearly  perfect 
a  specimen  of  moving  and  simple  elo 
quence  as  can  be  found  in  the  records  of 
the  law.  Few  bits  in  American  prose 
can  stand  comparison  with  this  for  dra 
matic  vividness  combined  with  the 
severest  taste  and  the  most  convincing 
thought. 

Mr.  Webster  has  done  much  for  the 
American  school-boy,  and  that  impor 
tant  creature  loves  to  declaim  these  ter 
rible  sentences  almost  as  keenly  as  he 
delights  in  the  " Venerable  Men"  of 
the  first  Bunker  Hill  oration.  But  in 
this  bit,  as  in  Mr.  Webster's  other 
highest  flights,  the  school-boy  shares  his 
rapture  with  the  lawyer,  the  scholar, 


DANIEL  WEBSTEK  35 

and  the  man  of  taste.  The  qualities  are 
not  only  striking,  they  are  universal. 
From  the  opening  words, —  telling  why 
the  orator  has  consented  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life  to  plead  for  the  death 
of  a  fellow-being,  through  the  picture  in 
the  moonlight  of  the  midnight  murder 
and  its  hire  and  salary  motives,  through 
the  words  which  tell  how  conscience 
struggles  hardest  to  betray  the  victim 
when  the  deadly  net  of  circumstance  is 
binding  itself  about  him,  down  to  the 
final  burst  about  suicide  and  confession, 
—  this  is  surely  a  masterpiece  of  human 
speech ;  and  when  we  imagine  how  the 
orator  must  have  stood,  with  his  blazing 
eyes,  and  black,  enormous  head,  giving 
forth  his  sentences  in  a  voice  that  could 
bring  tears  and  start  terror,  even  had  its 
words  meant  nothing, —  it  is  not  wonder 
ful  to  read  of  the  fright  and  complete 
surrender  of  the  men  who  sat  facing  the 
speaker  in  the  jury-box. 

Mr.  Webster  understood  the  workings 


36  DAKIEL  WEBSTEB 

of  the  average  mind.  At  this  high 
period  of  his  genius,  he  swept  like  an 
eagle  upon  the  realities  of  his  case,  hold 
ing  up  the  central  facts  as  seen  from  the 
simple  human  standpoint,  as  visibly  to 
the  plain  juryman  as  to  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  land  ;  and  his  best  jury 
speeches,  therefore,  have  a  force  and 
beauty  not  surpassed  by  his  ablest  con 
stitutional  arguments.  In  one  quality, 
indeed,  the  jury  work  stands  higher.  It 
is  more  original.  He  selected  his  law 
from  the  fullest  men  about  him,  so  sort 
ing  and  marshalling  their  thoughts  as 
to  give  them  victory  ;  but  this  power  of 
statement,  which  gave  his  constitutional 
arguments  their  greatest  virtue,  sprung 
in  the  jury  cases  direct  from  his  own 
vision  of  the  facts,  with  no  aid  from 
more  scholarly  minds.  He  was  always 
fair,  never  shirked  or  obscured  the  issues, 
and  won  the  jury  almost  as  much  by  his 
candor  and  justice  as  by  his  bearing, 
eloquence,  and  coherent  argument. 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  37 

It  is  because  they  are  on  more  impor 
tant  topics  that  his  leading  Supreme 
Court  arguments  stand  even  higher. 
Mr.  Webster  himself  believed,  at  least 
in  some  expressive  moods,  that  the  best 
of  all  his  work  was  in  the  Dartmouth 
College  case,  1818,  and  in  Gibbons  v. 
Ogden,  1824.  The  college  case  owes  its 
immense  importance  to  the  fact  that  the 
point  on  which  it  finally  rested  settled 
the  relations  of  the  States  to  the  national 
Constitution.  No  State  legislature,  it 
was  contended  and  decided,  had  the  con 
stitutional  right  to  interfere  in  the  affairs 
of  an  institution  like  Dartmouth  College, 
established  by  private  persons  for  spe 
cial  purposes.  Mr.  Webster  claimed  no 
credit  for  the  analysis  of  this  case,  but 
freely  admitted  his  indebtedness  to  the 
able  lawyers  who  prepared  it,  whose 
conclusions  he  merely  fortified  and  ex 
pounded.  But  his  arrangement  and  his 
exposition,  in  all  probability,  decided 
the  issue,  and  led  the  Supreme  Court  to 


38  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

lay  down,  against  the  previous  convic 
tion  of  the  majority,  one  of  the  most  far- 
reaching  principles  of  our  government. 
When  Mr.  Webster  argued  the  case  at 
Exeter,  he  left  the  New  Hampshire 
judges  in  tears ;  but  they  decided  against 
him,  and  he  learned  much  from  their 
opinions.  The  most  intelligent  witness 
who  has  recorded  what  happened  when 
the  case  went  to  the  Supreme  Court,  was 
prejudiced  by  what  he  had  heard  of  the 
result  in  New  Hampshire,  as  he  was  no 
believer  in  pathos  as  a  factor  in  legal 
argument.  This  observer  saw  Justice 
Story  prepare  pencil  and  paper  for  notes 
against  the  orator's  position.  He  saw 
that  justice  sit  through  the  argument 
without  lifting  his  pencil.  Afterward 
Justice  Story  explained  that  there  was 
nothing  to  write,  the  whole  train  of 
thought  being  unfolded  with  such  sim 
plicity  and  sequence  that  no  one  could 
forget  it.  The  court- room  was  full  of 
women,  as  it  frequently  was  when  Mr. 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  39 

Webster  spoke  even  on  questions  which 
they  could  not  understand.  They  came 
to  hear  those  appeals  to  conscience  and 
feeling,  which  every  now  and  then  re 
lieved  the  technical  discussion,  and  to 
listen  to  the  voice  and  keep  their  eyes 
on  the  commanding  presence.  At  the 
end  of  this  argument,  Marshall,  the 
greatest  legal  mind  in  the  history  of  our 
country,  was  leaning  forward,  "with  his 
tall  and  gaunt  figure  bent  over  as  if  to 
catch  the  slightest  whisper,  the  deep 
furrows  of  his  cheek  expanded  with 
emotion,  and  his  eyes  suffused  with 
tears. ??  Mr.  Webster  had  finished  the 
theory  of  his  case.  He  had  explained 
the  authority  of  the  Constitution  and  the 
dangers  that  might  arise  from  allowing 
any  State  laws  to  infringe  it.  He  now 
turned  toward  the  chief  justice.  "Sir, 
you  may  destroy  this  little  institution. 
It  is  weak.  It  is  in  your  hands.  I  know 
it  is  one  of  the  lesser  lights  in  the  literary 
horizon  of  our  country.  You  may  put 


40  DAOTEL  WEBSTER 

it  out.  But,  if  you  do,  you  must  carry 
out  your  work.  You  must  extinguish, 
one  after  another,  all  those  greater  lights 
of  science  which,  for  more  than  a  cen 
tury,  have  thrown  their  radiance  over 
our  land.  It  is,  sir,  as  I  have  said,  a 
small  college.  And  yet  there  are  those 
who  love  it." 

Here  the  orator  himself  broke  down. 
His  voice  failed.  He  could  not  go  on. 
When  he  recovered,  and  ended  in  a  few 
words  of  almost  equal  power,  he  had 
completed  an  argument  in  which  grasp 
of  his  subject,  persuasive  distinctness  of 
thought,  and  adroit  appeal  to  the  preju 
dices  of  the  great  lawyers  on  the  bench 
were  so  mingled  that  in  this  end  the 
far-reaching  doctrine  of  our  government 
was  established.  Mr.  Pinkney,  the  lead 
ing  lawyer  in  the  land,  believed  the 
case  was  won  more  by  eloquence  than 
by  law. 

Other  cases  followed,  confirming  the 
reputation  already  made.  One  of  them 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  41 

should  be  mentioned  for  an  anecdote 
connected  with  it  which  lights  up  the 
nature  of  Mr.  Webster's  legal  thought. 
In  what  is  know  as  the  Ehode  Island 
case,  a  young  attorney  named  Bosworth 
was  sent  to  explain  the  facts  and  the 
conclusions  reached  by  the  lawyers  who 
had  prepared  the  case.  Mr.  Webster 
listened  to  the  explanation,  and  felt  that 
something  was  wanting.  ' '  Is  that  alH ' ' 
he  asked.  The  young  attorney  then 
modestly  offered  a  theory  of  his  own, 
which  his  superiors  had  rejected.  "Mr. 
Bosworth/'  exclaimed  Webster,  "by 
the  blood  of  all  the  Bosworths  who  fell 
on  Bosworth  field,  that  is  the  point  of 
the  case."  That,  in  the  law  as  in  poli 
tics,  was  the  nature  of  his  mind.  With 
judgment  and  tact  he  listened  to  what 
others  contributed,  and  then  he  picked 
out  the  point  and  brought  all  his  powers 
to  bear  on  that.  Hence  the  success  of 
that  fairness  to  opponents,  which  made 
,state  their  arguments  better  than 


42  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

they  had  been  able  to  formulate  them 
for  themselves.  He  could  afford  to  give 
the  opposition  a  powerful  statement ;  for 
he  relied  on  no  trick  or  subtlety,  but  on 
the  clear  presentation  of  deep-seated 
truths.  This  distinct  vision  far  into  the 
life  of  the  great  themes  which  he  was 
called  upon  to  treat  is  the  highest  qual 
ity  of  his  mind,  and  it  was  in  control 
of  an  eloquence  which  had  become  as 
pure  as  it  was  magnificent. 

"When  I  was  a  young  man,"  once 
said  Mr.  Webster,  "and  first  entered 
the  law,  my  style  of  oratory  was  as 
round  and  florid  as  Choate's.  I  do  not 
think  it  is  the  best.  It  is  not  according 
to  my  taste."  That  taste,  once  acquired, 
almost  never  left  him, —  never,  perhaps, 
before  that  turn  in  his  life  which  made 
him  the  defender  of  errors  which  he 
had  done  so  much  to  expose,  and  then 
but  seldom.  At  this  high  noon  of  his 
gifts  and  character  he  planted  himself 
firmly  on  great  general  principles,  rely- 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  43 

ing  almost  wholly  on  a  well -stored 
memory  for  what  support  they  needed. 
Occasional  bursts  of  grandeur,  always 
timed  with  judgment,  and  alluring  di 
gressions  to  refresh  the  attention,  chosen 
with  the  same  instinct,  relieve  the  steady 
march  of  his  exposition.  When  he  was 
a  law  student  in  Boston,  he  gave  his  best 
analysis  to  the  characters  of  men  and 
the  methods  of  successful  lawyers ;  and 
at  the  height  of  his  fame  it  was  in  the 
knowledge  of  the  human  mind  and  heart 
that  he  most  excelled. 

The  years  in  which  these  law  cases 
were  being  argued  also  saw  the  delivery 
of  the  memorial  addresses  on  which  so 
much  of  their  author's  renown  is  built. 
The  first  —  and,  in  the  orator's  own  opin 
ion,  the  best  —  was  made  at  Plymouth 
in  1820,  to  commemorate  the  landing 
of  the  Pilgrims.  John  Adams,  who  lis 
tened  to  the  oration  and  who  had  heard 
Pitt,  Fox,  Burke,  and  Sheridan,  wrote  to 
Mr.  Webster  that  Burke  was  no  longer 


44  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

entitled  to  be  called  the  most  consum 
mate  orator  of  modern  times.  "This 
oration/'  he  said,  "will  be  read  five 
hundred  years  hence  with  as  much  rapt 
ure  as  it  was  heard.  It  ought  to  be 
read  at  the  end  of  every  century,  and 
indeed  at  the  end  of  every  year,  forever 
and  ever."  And  he  also  said,  "  If  there 
be  an  American  who  can  read  it  without 
tears,  I  am  not  that  American." 

The  subject  gave  Mr.  Webster  an  op 
portunity  to  put  into  an  eloquent  pop 
ular  form,  which  should  move  a  large 
gathering,  those  principles  of  American 
nationality  which  were  the  basis  of  his 
thought  as  a  statesman  and  as  an  orator. 
The  orator's  power  of  voice  and  presence 
did  much,  of  course,  to  melt  and  thrill 
the  audience  before  him ;  but  the  imme 
diate  effect  was  so  nearly  equalled  by  the 
lasting  influence  that  Adams's  prophecy 
has  been  a  fair  statement  of  the  truth. 
One  passage  above  all  probably  worked 
more  potently  on  after  events  than  any 


DANIEL  WEBSTEB  45 

other  single  burst  of  indignation  against 
the  traffic  in  slaves  :  — 

"In  the  sight  of  our  law  the  African 
slave-trader  is  a  pirate  and  a  felon ;  and, 
in  the  sight  of  Heaven,  an  offender  far 
beyond  the  ordinary  depth  of  human 
guilt.  There  is  no  brighter  page  of  our 
history  than  that  which  records  the 
measures  which  have  been  adopted  by 
the  government  at  an  early  day,  and  at 
different  times  since,  for  the  suppression 
of  this  traffic  5  and  I  would  call  on  all 
the  true  sons  of  New  England  to  co 
operate  with  the  laws  of  man  and  the 
justice  of  Heaven.  If  there  be,  within 
the  extent  of  our  knowledge  or  influ 
ence,  any  participation  in  this  traffic,  let 
us  pledge  ourselves  here,  upon  the  rock 
of  Plymouth,  to  extirpate  and  destroy 
it.  It  is  not  fit  that  the  land  of  the  Pil 
grims  should  bear  the  shame  longer.  I 
hear  the  sound  of  the  hammer,  I  see  the 
smoke  of  the  furnaces  where  manacles 
and  fetters  are  still  forged  for  human 


46  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

limbs.  I  see  the  visages  of  those  who  by 
stealth  and  at  midnight  labor  in  this 
work  of  hell,  foul  and  dark,  as  may  be 
come  the  artificers  of  such  instruments 
of  misery  and  torture.  Let  that  spot  be 
purified,  or  let  it  cease  to  be  of  New 
England.  Let  it  be  purified,  or  let  it 
be  set  aside  from  the  Christian  world. 
Let  it  be  put  out  of  the  circle  of  human 
sympathies  and  human  regards,  and  let 
civilized  man  henceforth  have  no  com 
munion  with  it." 

Years  after,  when  he  was  forced  to 
explain  them  away,  those  sentences  met 
Mr.  Webster  at  every  turn.  With  it 
went  hand  in  hand  this  other  passage 
from  the  same  oration  :  — 

"  Conscience,  in  the  cause  of  religion 
and  the  worship  of  the  Deity,  prepares 
the  mind  to  act  and  to  suffer  beyond 
almost  all  other  causes.  It  sometimes 
gives  an  impulse  so  irresistible  that  no 
fetters  of  power  or  of  opinion  can  with 
stand  it.  History  instructs  us  that  this 


DANIEL   WEBSTEK  47 

love  of  religious  liberty,  a  compound 
sentiment  in  the  breast  of  man,  made  up 
of  the  clearest  sense  of  right  and  the 
highest  conviction  of  duty,  is  able  to 
look  the  sternest  despotism  in  the  face, 
and,  with  means  apparently  most  in 
adequate,  to  shake  principalities  and 
powers.  There  is  a  boldness,  a  spirit  of 
daring,  in  religious  reformers  not  to  be 
measured  by  the  general  rules  which 
control  men's  purposes  and  actions.  If 
the  hand  of  power  be  laid  upon  it,  this 
only  seems  to  augment  its  force  and  its 
elasticity,  and  to  cause  its  action  to  be 
more  formidable  and  violent.  Human 
invention  has  devised  nothing,  human 
power  has  compassed  nothing,  that  can 
forcibly  restrain  it,  when  it  breaks  forth. 
Nothing  can  stop  it  but  to  give  way  to 
it:  nothing  can  check  it  but  indul 
gence.  It  loses  its  power  only  when  it 
has  gained  its  object.  The  principle  of 
toleration,  to  which  the  world  has  come 
so  slowly,  is  at  once  the  most  just  and 


48  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

the  most  wise  of  all  principles.  Even 
when  religious  feeling  takes  a  character 
of  extravagance  and  enthusiasm,  and 
seems  to  threaten  the  order  of  society 
and  shake  the  columns  of  the  social  edi 
fice;  its  principal  danger  is  in  its  re 
straint.  If  it  be  allowed  indulgence  and 
expansion,  like  the  elemental  fires,  it 
only  agitates,  and,  perhaps,  purifies  the 
atmosphere  ;  while  its  efforts  to  throw 
off  restraint  would  burst  the  world 
asunder.'7 

One  of  the  most  brilliant  prophecies 
in  history  was  made  in  this  oration,  and 
of  no  part  of  it  did  Mr.  Webster  him 
self  seem  more  proud.  It  was  when, 
explaining  what  influence  subdivision 
of  property  had  on  government,  he  met 
the  apparent  exception  of  France  by  de 
claring  that,  "if  the  government  do  not 
change  the  law,  the  law  in  half  a  cen 
tury  will  change  the  government;  and 
that  this  change  will  be,  not  in  favor  of 
the  power  of  the  crown,  as  some  Euro- 


DANIEL  WEBSTEE  49 

pean  writers  have  supposed,  but  against 
it."  In  these  great  popular  orations 
such  clear  perception  as  this  is  scattered 
throughout.  One  sober  passage,  answer 
ing  the  objection  that  American  society 
furnishes  no  class  of  men  of  fortune  and 
leisure,  boldly  declares  that  the  promo 
tion  of  taste  and  literature  are  not  pri 
mary  objects  of  political  institutions. 

The  second  in  time  among  the  re 
nowned  memorial  addresses  was  deliv 
ered  in  1825,  to  commemorate  the  battle 
of  Bunker  Hill.  Standing  on  a  platform 
at  the  foot  of  the  hill  on  which  the  vic 
tory  was  won,  Mr.  Webster  addressed  a 
multitude  rising  on  the  slopes  above 
him.  It  was  an  occasion  which  appealed 
intensely  to  the  orator's  imagination, 
and  his  mind  dwelt  on  it  for  some  time 
before  the  day.  The  address  to  the 
soldiers,  beginning,  "Venerable  men," 
gave  him  little  trouble ;  for,  as  he  said, 
he  had  lived  in  times  that  taught  him 
how  to  appeal  to  men  like  them.  What 


50  DANIEL  WEBSTEB 

caused  him  anxiety  was  the  opening  and 
the  address  to  LaFayette.  Any  one 
looking  over  the  speech,  and  seeing  the 
differing  tones  in  which  each  part  of  the 
audience  is  addressed,  will  be  reminded 
of  the  solidity  with  which  the  speaker 
studied  his  audience.  The  crowd  wept 
and  cheered  5  but  two  passages,  above  all 
the  rest,  brought  intense  emotion.  One 
was  the  often  quoted  tribute  to  the  vet 
erans  :  the  other,  that  final  touch  of 
beauty  in  the  reasons  for  the  monument. 
This,  like  all  of  Mr.  Webster's  effects, 
loses  by  standing  alone  ;  for  even  to  the 
reader  he  has,  to  a  peculiar  degree,  the 
power  of  accumulation,  of  stirring  the 
emotions  gradually  to  the  point  where, 
rising  to  a  warmer  glow,  he  starts  the 
tears  or  touches  off  the  accumulated  en 
thusiasm.  Nevertheless,  a  few  lines  may 
stand  here  to  mark  the  first  point  at 
which  the  great  assembly  was  carried 
away  by  the  orator  :  "  We  wish,  finally, 
that  the  last  object  to  the  sight  of  him 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  51 

who  leaves  his  native  shore,  and  the  first 
to  gladden  him  who  revisits  it,  may  be 
something  which  shall  remind  him  of  the 
liberty  and  glory  of  his  country.  Let  it 
rise  !  Let  it  rise,  till  it  meet  the  sun  in 
his  coming  !  Let  the  earliest  light  of  the 
morning  gild  it,  and  parting  day  linger 
and  play  on  its  summit ! " 

This  oration,  in  Mr.  Webster's  opinion, 
expressed  just  before  its  delivery,  was 
a  failure, —  a  kind  of  soft  thaw,  like  the 
weather  in  which  it  was  composed  ;  and 
he  continued  to  prefer  the  earlier  effort. 
Like  his  other  speeches  celebrating  occa 
sions,  and  unlike  his  arguments  in  the 
Senate  and  in  the  courts  of  law,  it  is  less 
a  logical  than  an  emotional  whole.  It 
is  a  series  of  subjects  strung  together 
loosely,  but  so  handled  as  to  give  hearers 
of  every  sort  the  keen  glow  of  pathetic 
fervor.  Two  anecdotes  about  the  com 
position  of  this  address  illustrate  Mr. 
Webster's  habit  of  thought.  Devoted 
to  country  life,  even  to  the  very  last,  he 


52  DAKIEL  WEBSTEB 

composed  some  of  his  most  renowned  out 
bursts  standing  in  brooks  with  rod  in 
hand.  His  son  Fletcher,  approaching 
from  behind,  saw  his  father,  holding  the 
gun  in  his  left  hand,  step  impressively 
forward,  raise  his  right  hand,  and  break 
out  with  " Venerable  men!"  Another 
tale  recounts  that  the  address  to  La- 
Fayette  had  a  similar  origin.  After 
long  hours  of  empty  fishing  in  his  yacht, 
the  orator  landed  a  prize;  and,  as  it 
dangled  in  the  air,  he  cried,  "  Welcome  ! 
all  hail !  and  thrice  welcome,  citizen  of 
two  hemispheres  ! "  In  their  manner  of 
birth  also,  these  patriotic  orations  dif 
fered  from  the  argumentatic  speeches. 
Here  he  studied  the  language  at  the 
centres  of  effect ;  but,  in  such  master 
pieces  as  the  reply  to  Hayne,  he  jotted 
down  a  few  topics,  and  trusted  to  the 
moment  for  the  words.  The  result  is  not 
accurately  to  be  decided,  for  Mr.  Web 
ster  corrected  a  good  deal.  The  glowing 
end  of  the  great  reply  has  been  quieted, 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  53 

the  melting  appeals  to  sentiment  in  the 
Dartmouth  College  case  have  been 
elided,  and  his  general  practice  was  to 
go  over  every  speech  and  argument  to 
soften  the  passages  brought  out  by  the 
moment  in  a  blaze  too  bright  for  his 
classic  taste.  There  is  a  tale  that  on  the 
morning  following  the  Adams  and  Jeffer 
son  eulogy  he  threw  the  manuscript  to 
a  student  with  the  request,  "  Please  take 
that  discourse,  and  cut  out  all  the  Latin 
words." 

This  tribute  to  Adams  and  Jefferson, 
which  came  a  year  after  the  Bunker  Hill 
oration,  left  Mr.  Webster's  renown  as 
a  memorial  speaker  as  high  as  it  ever 
rose.  There  were  famous  speeches  later, 
such  as  the  second  Bunker  Hill,  June  17, 
1843,  and  the  Character  of  Washington, 
February  22,  1832 ;  but  none  of  them 
carried  his  reputation  higher.  In  this 
tribute  the  best- known  bit  is  the  imagi 
nary  speech,  "Sink  or  swim,  live  or  die, 
survive  or  perish,  I  give  my  hand  and 


54  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

my  heart  to  this  vote,"  put  into  the 
mouth  of  John  Adams  in  favor  of  de 
claring  independence.  ^Nothing  in  all 
his  writings  shows  more  clearly  his  his 
torical  imagination,  the  vividness  with 
which  he  saw  past  scenes,  became  alive 
with  their  spirit,  and  filled  himself  with 
the  souls  of  other  men.  He  ended  this 
speech  in  the  early  morning,  and  the 
page  was  wet  with  tears.  This  confes 
sion,  made  by  him  later  to  President 
Fillinore,  is  the  most  direct  testimony 
we  have  to  his  mood  in  composition ; 
but  without  it  we  could  guess  that  so 
completely  oratorical  a  temperament  — 
especially  when  the  talent  excited  the 
emotions  not  by  barbaric  splendor  of 
language  so  much  as  by  simple  words 
alive  with  the  fire  of  their  meaning  — 
must  compose  successfully  only  when  its 
own  nature  vibrated  finely  and  deeply 
to  the  workings  of  its  own  genius.  So 
wholly  had  the  orator  identified  himself 
with  the  intense  scene  which  he  lived 


DANIEL  WEBSTEB  55 

through  as  the  soul  of  Adams  that 
letters  from  all  sides  sought  the  origin 
of  the  speech,  and  scepticism  met  the 
statement  that  it  was  imagined. 

From  another  point  of  view,  also,  this 
oration  turns  an  entertaining  light  on 
Mr.  Webster's  character.  Few  read  it 
without  being  struck  by  the  change  in 
treatment  marked  by  the  change  in  sub 
ject.  For  Adams  is  all  the  real  ardor 
and  most  of  the  space,  for  Jefferson  only 
decorous  praise,  so  that  a  hearer  or 
reader,  learning  only  from  these  words, 
might  well  suppose  that  Jefferson's  im 
portance  in  the  history  of  his  country 
was  far  less  than  that  of  his  companion 
statesman.  The  Federalist  prejudices  of 
Ebenezer  Webster  still  lived  in  Daniel. 

During  these  fruitful  years,  while  he 
was  building  some  of  the  most  enduring 
pillars  of  his  fame  as  a  lawyer  and  as  a 
master  of  patriotic  eloquence,  his  activ 
ity  had  also  important  results  in  other 
fields.  A  Soon  after  leaving  Congress,  he 


56  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

opposed  the  compromise  of  1819, — a  fact 
of  which  the  interest  lies  in  his  later 
attitude  on  the  slavery  question.  A 
year  later,  as  a  delegate  to  the  conven 
tion  for  revising  the  Constitution  of  Mas 
sachusetts,  he  made  two  lucid  and 
effective  arguments,  one  favoring  the 
retention  of  a  property  basis  for  repre 
sentation  in  the  Senate,  the  other  aiding 
an  effort  to  make  judicial  officers  re 
movable  by  the  governor  and  council 
upon  the  address  of  two-thirds  instead 
of  a  majority  of  each  branch  of  the 
legislature. 

The  permanent  arguments  for  an  inde 
pendent  judiciary,  at  least  as  preserved 
in  his  works,  are  stated  briefly  and  with 
little  attempt  at  eloquence.  The  plea 
for  property  representation,  a  more  elab 
orate  address,  is  full  of  ripe  thought 
firmly  expounded.  He  was  opposing 
Democratic  prejudices  and  laying  him 
self  open  to  suspicion  and  to  the  kind  of 
misrepresentation  of  which  he  received 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  57 

so  much  later,  and  of  which  an  example 
may  be  found  in  Theodore  Parker's 
treatment  of  this  address  and  of  Mr. 
Webster's  early  speeches  in  favor  of 
commerce.  Whatever  may  be  said  of 
his  later  relation  to  material  interests, 
the  respect  which  he  showed  at  this 
period  for  property  is  accepted  to-day 
as  a  proof  of  the  useful  and  vital  nature 
of  his  thought.  His  argument  before 
the  convention  was  that  there  ought  to 
be  a  difference  in  origin  between  the  two 
houses,  and  that,  as  one  branch  was 
based  on  population,  property  was  the 
best  basis  for  the  other.  Shrewdness  in 
answering  objections  shared  by  most 
American  citizens  is  noticeable  through 
out  this  argument.  "It  has  been  said 
that  we  propose  to  give  to  property, 
merely  as  such,  a  control  over  the 
people,  universally  considered.  But 
this  I  take  to  be  not  at  all  the  true 
nature  of  the  proposition.  The  Senate 
is  not  to  be  a  check  on  the  people,  but 


58  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

on  the  House  of  Eepresentatives.  It  is 
the  case  of  an  authority  given  to  one 
agent  to  check  or  control  another. " 

He  drew  a  vivid  and  distinct  picture 
of  "the  mischievous  influence  of  the 
popular  power  when  disconnected  with 
property/7  in  the  case  of  Home,  at  the 
time  when  her  liberty  fell  under  the 
arm  of  Caesar.  The  majority  could  be 
reached  by  bribes  and  largesses,  and 
used  to  overpower  the  substantial  citi 
zens.  "  Property  was  in  the  hands  of 
one  description  of  men,  and  power  in 
those  of  another  ;  and  the  balance  of  the 
constitution  was  destroyed."  It  was  be 
cause  the  popular  magistrates  repre 
sented  those  who  had  not  a  stake  in  the 
Commonwealth  that  Rome  laid  her  neck 
at  the  feet  of  her  conqueror.  The  part 
of  property  in  the  English  Revolution  of 
1688  and  in  our  own  war  for  indepen 
dence  was  also  touched  upon.  With  re 
strained  earnestness  the  orator  pleaded 
that  this  question  should  not  be  confused 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  59 

with  the  power  of  a  few  rich  men,  but 
looked  upon  as  concerning  the  rights  of 
property  distributed  among  many;  for 
the  proposal  was  to  continue  the  prac 
tice  of  apportioning  senators  according 
to  the  entire  amount  of  property  in  the 
districts.  The  victory  was  won  at  the 
time ;  but  shortly  after  the  principle  was 
wiped  out  of  the  American  nation,  ap 
parently  forever. 


III. 

IN  1823  Mr.  Webster  returned  to  Con 
gress  as  a  representative  from  the  Boston 
district,  and  was  put  at  the  head  of  the 
Judiciary  Committee  by  Mr.  Clay.  In 
preparing  and  defending  a  bill  to  amend 
the  judicial  system,  he  accomplished  a 
valuable  task ;  but  the  most  brilliant 
expression  of  his  powers  given  in  the 
first  few  years  after  his  return  was  in  the 
speech  which  he  made  in  January  of 
1824,  on  his  own  resolution  to  provide 
by  law  for  defraying  the  expense  of  a 
commissioner  to  Greece.  Of  this  speech 
he  wrote,  in  1831,  "  I  think  I  am  more 
fond  of  this  child  than  of  any  of  the 
family." 

The  public  expected  a  display  of  fire, 
but  Mr.  Webster  had  no  such  intention. 
The  Greek  revolution  aroused  his  sym 
pathies  ;  but  what  he  sought  was  an 
opportunity  to  refute  the  doctrines  of 
the  Holy  Alliance,  affirming  the  right 


DANIEL  WEBSTEE  61 

of  absolute  governments  to  form  concerts 
for  the  purpose  of  crushing  rebellion 
anywhere, — any  insurrection  threaten 
ing  them  all  by  defying  the  pretensions 
on  which  they  are  founded.  As  Mr. 
Webster  summarized  it,  "The  end  and 
scope  of  this  amalgamated  policy  are 
neither  more  nor  less  than  this, — to  in 
terfere,  by  force,  for  any  government, 
against  any  people  who  may  resist  it. 
Be  the  state  of  the  people  what  it  may, 
they  shall  not  rise  :  be  the  government 
what  it  will,  it  shall  not  be  opposed. " 
Nowhere,  he  believed,  but  in  this  coun 
try,  and  perhaps  in  England,  were  these 
monstrous  principles  likely  to  be  re 
sisted.  "  Human  liberty  may  yet,  per 
haps,  be  obliged  to  repose  its  principal 
hopes  on  the  intelligence  and  vigor  of 
the  Saxon  race."  To  the  objection  that 
it  was  not  an  American  affair,  that  the 
thunder  rolled  only  at  a  distance,  that, 
whatever  others  might  suffer,  we  should 
remain  safe,  Mr.  Webster  replied:  "I 


62  DANIEL  WEBSTEB 

think  it  is  a  sufficient  answer  to  say  to 
this  that  we  are  one  of  the  nations  of 
the  earth ;  that  we  have  an  interest, 
therefore,  in  the  preservation  of  that 
system  of  national  law  and  national  in 
tercourse  which  has  heretofore  subsisted, 
so  beneficially  for  all. ?  ? 

The  increase  of  the  commercial  spirit 
and  the  intercourse  of  nations  had  given 
us  a  high  concern  in  the  principles  upon 
which  that  intercourse  was  founded,  but 
Mr.  Webster  was  not  willing  to  rely 
only  on  the  ground  of  direct  interest. 
He  appealed  to  all  that  we  had  gained 
from  the  principles  of  lawful  resistance, 
and  asked  if  the  duty  was  not  imposed 
upon  us  to  give  our  weight  to  the  side 
of  liberty  and  justice.  Our  right  to  in 
terfere,  if  the  renewed  combination  of 
the  European  Continental  sovereigns 
against  the  newly  established  free  States 
of  South  America  should  be  made,  was 
no  more  clear  than  our  right  to  protest 
if  the  same  combination  were  directed 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  63 

against  the  smallest  state  in  Europe. 
"We  shall  not,  I  trust,  act  upon  the 
notion  of  dividing  the  world  with  the 
Holy  Alliance,  and  complain  of  nothing 
done  by  them  in  their  hemisphere  if 
they  will  not  interfere  with  ours."  He 
did  not  advise  armed  intervention,  for 
he  drew  clearly  the  line  between  the 
practicable  and  the  impossible ;  but  he 
did  plead  for  all  the  help  that  moral 
sympathy  could  give  to  a  struggling 
people.  Of  the  Holy  Alliance  he  said  : 
"They  might  indeed  prefer  that  we 
should  express  no  dissent  from  the  doc 
trines  they  have  avowed  and  the  appli 
cation  which  they  have  made  of  those 
doctrines  to  the  law  of  Greece.  But  I 
trust  we  are  not  disposed  to  leave  them 
in  any  doubt  as  to  our  sentiments  upon 
these  important  subjects." 

The  next  of  the  questions  of  universal 
interest,  then  and  now,  upon  which  Mr. 
Webster  spoke  words  which  retain  their 
weight  through  changing  times,  was  the 


64  DANIEL  WEBSTEB 

tariff.  He  made  a  strong  argument  for 
the  laissez-faire  doctrine  in  1824  ;  but,  as 
he  modified  his  position  radically  four 
years  later,  it  will  be  well  to  notice  first 
the  changes  that  about  this  time  dis 
turbed  his  private  life,  since  they  are 
closely  connected  with  the  change  of 
tone  that,  little  by  little,  was  to  show 
itself  in  his  public  career. 

Grace  Fletcher  Webster,  often  spoken 
of  by  the  orator  in  after  days  as  the 
mother  of  his  children,  apparently  had 
no  small  role  in  keeping  alert,  while  she 
lived,  those  high  principles  which  her 
husband  had  breathed  in  with  the  New 
Hampshire  mountain  air.  Her  upright 
New  England  faith  and  sweet  loyalty 
must  have  been  one  of  the  strongest  bar 
riers  resisting  the  temptations  which  lay 
before  the  impressionable  statesman. 
Bits  from  her  latest  letters  give  the  feel 
ing  of  her  character.  One  written  Jan. 
14,  1827,  ends  :  — 


DANIEL  WEBSTEK  65 

"I  received  with  delight  Mr.  Can 
ning's  speech  in  Parliament.  He  is  a 
jewel  in  the  crown  of  Great  Britain. 
Such  a  mind  is  one  of  Heaven's  best 
gifts.  Every  other  earthly  possession  is 
dross  to  it.  You  will  think,  I  fancy, 
that  I  am  in  the  heroic  vein  this  morn 
ing.  I  do  feel  inspired,  with  two  letters 
from  yon  and  reading  Mr.  Canning's 
speech.  But  I  am, 

"  As  ever,  entirely  yours, 

"  GRACE  WEBSTER." 

Another  begins :  — 

BOSTON,  Jan.  18,  1827. 

"I  have  been  reading  this  morning 
a  speech  of  yours,  my  beloved  husband, 
which  makes  me  hail  this  anniversary 
of  your  birth  with  increased  delight. 
May  heaven  add  blessings  with  years ! 
and  many,  many  may  it  add  to  a  life  so 
valued  and  so  valuable  !  I  pity  the  man 
so  dead  to  every  sentiment,  not  only  of 


66  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

honor,  but  honesty,  that  could  need  an 
argument  to  convince  him  of  the  justice 
of  the  claim  you  urged  ;  and  I  blush  for 
the  honor  of  our  country,  that  there 
should  be  a  majority  of  such  sordid  souls 
in  Congress.  I  hope  you  will  pardon  me 
for  meddling  with  such  high  matters. " 

In  December  of  the  same  year,  when 
she  was  ill,  she  begins  :  — 

FRIDAY  MORNING,  11  o'clock, 
December,  1827. 

"The  first  tribute  of  my  heart  is  to 
the  God  who  gives  me  strength  to  write  ; 
and  the  first  of  my  pen  to  you,  my  best 
beloved." 

The  next  note  is  the  last.     It  begins  : 

"I  wrote  you  yesterday,  my  beloved 
husband,  a  very  poor  letter  ;  but  I  flatter 
myself  that  a  poor  letter  from  me  will 
be  as  acceptable  as  a  good  one  from 
another." 


DANIEL  WEBSTEK  67 

She  died  in  January,  1828 ;  and  in 
1829  Mr.  Webster  married  Caroline  Le 
Boy,  of  New  York,  who  bronght  him 
money  and  social  position,  and  nothing 
else  that  can  be  traced  in  his  life.  In 
the  same  year  he  lost  Ezekiel,  the  strong- 
willed  brother,  another  of  those  close 
influences  that  held  the  early  healthy 
odor  of  New  England  ideals  about  him. 
As  early  as  June,  1827,  he  had  been 
elected,  somewhat  against  his  will,  to 
the  vacant  Massachusetts  seat  in  the 
national  Senate.  During  the  year  fol 
lowing  his  wife's  death  he  voted  and 
spoke  for  the  i '  tariff  of  abominations 7  J  ; 
and  from  that  period  he  came  to  be 
recognized  more  and  more  as  the  repre 
sentative  of  rich  New  England  business 
men.  In  the  year  following  EzekiePs 
death  and  his  second  marriage,  he  gave 
the  greatest  exhibition  of  all  his  powers, 
and  kept  himself  at  his  highest  level ; 
but  after  this  he  steadily  declined  from 
a  height  at  which  his  altering  nature 
could  no  longer  sustain  itself. 


68  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

The  character  of  American  statesmen 
had  changed  since  the  shining  days  of 
Hamilton  and  Washington,  and  the 
nature  of  American  thought  was  feeling 
the  first  results  of  the  rising  tide  of  mer 
cantile  excitement.  The  Boston  com 
panions  of  Mr.  Webster,  after  his  greatest 
successes,  were  worldly  and  convivial. 
He  has  said  himself  that  his  health  was 
lowered  by  eating  and  drinking  too 
much,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  he 
came  to  absorb  alcohol  with  something 
like  the  ease  with  which  he  absorbed 
ideas.  The  easy-going,  free,  jolly,  almost 
indifferent  way  in  which  he  naturally 
took  life  received  aid  from  this  change 
in  companionship  and  habit,  and  pos 
sibly,  though  less  surely,  from  the  ac 
companying  increase  in  his  miscellaneous 
relations  with  women.  At  the  same  time 
his  looseness  in  affairs  of  money  began 
to  do  its  work.  "We  all  know,"  said 
E.  C.  Winthrop,  in  his  eulogy  after  Mr. 
Webster's  death,  "that,  while  he  could 


DANIEL  WEBSTEE  69 

master  the  great  questions  of  national 
finance,  and  was  never  weary  in  main 
taining  the  importance  of  upholding  the 
national  credit,  he  never  cared  quite 
enough  about  his  own  finances,  or  took 
particular  pains  to  preserve  his  own  per 
sonal  credit.  We  all  know  that  he  was 
sometimes  impatient  of  differences,  and 
sometimes  arrogant  and  overbearing 
toward  opponents.  His  own  conscious 
ness  of  surpassing  powers,  and  the  flat 
teries  —  I  had  almost  said  the  idolatries 
—  of  innumerable  friends,  would  account 
for  much  more  of  all  this  than  he  ever 
displayed."  All  these  tendencies  grew 
along  together.  Although  he  seemed  to 
pay  few  of  his  larger  bills,  hotel  keepers 
deeming  it  an  honor  to  have  him  as  a 
guest  and  wine  merchants  being  glad  to 
make  him  gifts,  although  his  practice 
was  most  lucrative  and  his  fees  enormous, 
he  was  always  in  need  of  money;  and 
nobody  could  tell  what  became  of  his 
receipts.  His  easy  nature  gave  freely 


70  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

when  there  was  cash  about  him;  and 
stories  are  numerous  to  show  his  generous 
impulses  toward  the  needy,  and  his  care 
lessness  in  paying  one  bill  several  times 
at  intervals,  if  only  the  creditor  could 
find  him  with  money  in  his  purse. 

One  result  of  his  irresponsible  mode  of 
life  was  that  New  England  business  men 
later  formed  a  trust,  the  income  to  go  to 
him,  and  then,  if  she  survived  him,  to 
his  wife ;  and  it  is  believed,  though  not 
known  with  the  same  certainty,  that 
presents  from  individuals  interested  in 
Mr.  Webster's  genius  and  in  the  tariff 
were  frequent  and  enormous.  Some  of 
those  who  came  to  be  the  intimates  of  his 
daily  life,  were  trivial  sycophants ;  and 
all  these  things  together  —  the  change  in 
his  friends,  the  physical  effect  of  too 
much  dissipation,  the  moral  influence  of 
being  largely  supported  by  monopo 
lists  —  prepared  him  for  his  retreat  from 
some  of  the  positions  he  had  so  nobly 
held.  He  was  still  to  raise  his  fame 


DAOTEL  WEBSTEE  71 

higher,  as  the  Great  Defender  of  the 
Constitution;  but  the  influences  which 
finally  accomplished  so  much  are  best 
noticed  when  they  came  into  his  life. 
The  tariff  question  has  been  so  contin 
ually  thrashed  over  ever  since  the  war 
that  Mr.  "Webster's  principal  stands  need 
be  mentioned  only  in  the  most  general 
terms.  He  had  opposed  the  tariff  of 
1816,  he  made  a  great  speech  against 
that  of  1824,  and  he  voted  for  "the 
tariff  of  abominations7'  in  1828.  Of 
course,  it  is  not  difficult  for  a  shrewd 
man  to  base  a  change  of  principle  on  a 
pretended  or  actual  change  in  condi 
tions;  and  such  is  Mr.  Webster's  de 
fence.  At  first  he  had  laid  stress  on  the 
constitutional  argument ;  but  in  1824  the 
bulk  of  his  speech  was  a  full  and  lucid 
statement  of  the  well-known  laissez-faire 
doctrines, .  in  moderate  form,  skilfully 
supported  by  contemporary  examples. 
This  exposition  stands  to-day  as  one  of 
the  most  comprehensible  and  persuasive 


72  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

utterances  on  the  subject  ever  made  in 
the  United  States.  He  was  the  ablest 
opponent  of  Henry  Clay's  famous 
< '  American  policy. >  >  In  1827  and  1828 
he  supported  the  "bill  of  abomination" 
on  the  ground  that  "his  constituents" 
had  invested  their  money  on  the  faith 
of  what  had  become  the  law.  There  is 
certainly  no  logical  inconsistency,  but 
the  change  was  universally  connected 
with  Mr.  Webster's  growing  relations 
with  a  class  of  men  different  from  those 
who  had  helped  to  mould  his  early 
thought.  Colonel  Hayne  was  able  to 
give  later,  in  the  great  debate,  the  only 
thrust  which  Mr.  Webster  but  feebly 
met,  when  he  said:  "On  that  occasion, 
sir,  the  gentleman  assumed  a  position 
which  commanded  the  respect  and  ad 
miration  of  his  country.  .  .  .  With  a 
profound  sagacity,  a  fulness  of  knowl 
edge,  and  a  richness  of  illustration  that 
have  never  been  surpassed,  he  main 
tained  and  established  the  principles  of 


DANIEL  WEBSTEB  73 

commercial  freedom  on  a  foundation 
never  to  be  shaken.  .  .  .  Sir,  when  I 
recollect  the  position  which  the  gentle 
man  once  occupied,  and  that  which  he 
now  holds  in  public  estimation,  in  rela 
tion  to  this  subject,  it  is  not  at  all  sur 
prising  that  the  tariff  should  be  hateful 
to  his  ears." 

The  greatest  among  those  early  tradi 
tions  was  now,  however,  to  have  its 
most  glorious  expression.  Although  the 
commercial  spirit  was  settling  over  the 
land,  one  great  ideal  topic  of  debate  was 
at  the  height  of  its  existence.  The 
Constitution  was  in  the  air.  Every 
body  talked  about  it.  Multitudes  would 
listen  to  a  discussion  of  it.  Whenever 
two  or  three  statesmen  were  gathered  to 
gether,  they  compared  ideas  about  it. 
We  who  have  grown  up  since  the  war 
settled  the  last  of  the  vital  constitutional 
questions  by  the  most  conclusive  of  all 
arguments,  cannot  readily  conceive  the 
reality  which  then  clothed,  in  the  gen- 


74  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

eral  mind,  that  magic  word.  We  no 
longer  appeal  to  it.  They  appealed,  on 
the  most  critical  of  all  their  problems, 
to  little  else.  The  extension  of  slavery 
was  involved  in  it,  and  the  right  to  de 
stroy  the  Union  was  the  centre  of  it. 
Straining  every  nerve  to  bend  it  one 
way  or  the  other,  stood  on  one  side 
the  South,  led  by  the  cool  and  penetrat 
ing  mind  of  Calhoun ;  on  the  other, 
the  North,  hardly  knowing  the  solidest 
foundations  of  its  faith  until  they  were 
pointed  out  by  the  eloquence  of  the 
Great  Defender. 

When  he  entered  the  brightest  stage 
of  this  mighty  duel,  Daniel  Webster  was 
a  sight  to  rivet  every  eye.  His  frame, 
grown  larger,  but  not  yet  flabby,  gave 
new  majesty  and  potency  to  his  face  and 
voice  and  carriage  ;  and  his  mind,  just 
turning  the  summit  of  its  greatness,  was 
spurred  to  its  most  tremendous  efforts  by 
the  universal  excitement  which  centred 
in  this  momentous  question.  As  Mr. 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  75 

Webster  strolled  about  the  streets  of 
Boston,  loitering  before  the  windows, 
looking  at  everything,  everybody  turned 
to  look  at  him,  even  those  who  never 
guessed  who  he  was.  His  effect  on  the 
most  casual  passer  was  hypnotic.  He 
gave  the  impression  of  immense,  slum 
bering  power.  He  could  go  on  without 
effort,  and  still  be  great,  because  the 
force  of  his  mind  was  in  fundamental 
principles,  universal  truths,  with  which 
he  induced  the  Supreme  Court  to  over 
rule  decided  cases,  with  which  he  pene 
trated  to  the  heart  of  the  issue  in  politi 
cal  controversy.  In  the  war  about  the 
Constitution  he  was,  therefore,  always 
ready.  When  he  was  suddenly  called  to 
the  critical,  battle,  he  had  been  prepar 
ing  during  his  lifetime.  To  one  who 
asked  him  if  the  reply  to  Hayne  was 
extemporaneous,  he  replied,  "  Young 
man,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  extempo 
raneous  acquisition." 

The  doctrine  of   nullification  —  that, 


76  DANIEL  WEBSTEK 

instead  of  the  federal  government  being 
the  sole  judge  of  its  own  powers,  each 
State  retained  the  right  to  decide  for 
itself  whether  a  federal  law  was  consti 
tutional  —  rested  on  the  theory  that  the 
national  union  was  a  compact  existing 
only  during  the  consent  of  the  separate 
members.  The  head  exponent  of  this 
theory  was  John  C.  Calhoun,  who,  after 
years  of  debate  with  him,  said  that  Mr. 
Webster  stated  an  opponent's  arguments 
more  fairly  than  anybody  he  had  ever 
seen.  In  taking  his  stand  for  union,  on 
which  he  ardently  believed  liberty  and 
happiness  depended,  Mr.  Webster  an 
swered  the  subtleties  of  the  nullifiers,  as 
a  necessary  step  in  strengthening  the 
position  of  the  North ;  but  he  relied 
still  more  on  the  explanation  of  conse 
quences  and  the  appeal  to  patriotism. 
The  temperate  tone  of  a  large  mind  per 
vades  his  language  on  this  vital  subject. 
"My  son,7'  he  once  said,  "I  war  with 
principles,  and  not  with  men.'7  At  this 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  77 

period  his  thought  seemed  loaded  with 
the  weightiest  principles  and  lightened 
with  the  brightest  truths. 

This  reply  to  Hayne  and  Nullification 
is  called  in  his  private  correspondence 
"number  one  among  my  political  ef 
forts. ??  Its  importance  is  now  known 
to  all  the  world.  "The  discourses  at 
Plymouth  Eock  and  Bunker  Hill  were 
not  for  an  hour,"  says  Judge  Chamber 
lain,  "nor  was  the  Great  Eeply.  In 
the  days  of  their  utterance,  they  were 
resplendent,  unprecedented  eloquence ; 
but  they  spoke  truest  when  they  became 
wisdom  to  Lincoln  and  valor  to  Grant, 
they  rang  loudest  when  heard  along  the 
front  of  battle,  and  inspired  deeds  of 
immortal  heroism  on  a  hundred  fields.'7 

This  speech  was  immediately  the  re 
sult  of  accident.  While  Eobert  Young 
Hayne,  of  South  Carolina,  was  speaking 
in  January,  1830,  on  a  resolution  to 
restrict  the  sales  of  public  lands,  Mr. 
Webster  dropped  into  the  Senate,  after 


78  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

the  adjournment  of  the  Supreme  Court. 
He  arose  to  reply  5  but,  as  the  Senate 
adjourned,  he  spoke  the  next  day,  de 
livering  an  eloquent  argument,  which 
has  been  almost  submerged  by  his  more 
brilliant  effort  a  few  days  later,  gener 
ally  called  the  "  Eeply  to  Hayne."  The 
next  day  Hayne  replied,  refusing  to  con 
sent  to  an  adjournment  which  should 
enable  his  opponent  to  be  present  with 
out  neglecting  the  important  case  in 
court.  "Let  the  discussion  proceed, " 
said  Mr.  "Webster.  "I  am  willing  to  re 
ceive  the  gentleman's  fire."  Mr.  Hayne 
completed  his  speech  several  days  later, 
and  Mr.  Webster  was  prevented  from 
replying  at  once  only  by  an  adjourn 
ment. 

He  spoke  the  day  following,  from  few 
notes  hastily  prepared.  Edward  Everett 
tells  us  that  in  the  intervals  between 
these  speeches  Mr.  Webster  was  the  only 
person  in  Washington  who  seemed  en 
tirely  at  his  ease.  The  attacks  of  the 


DANIEL  WEBSTEE  79 

nullifiers  on  the  Constitution  had  grown 
rapidly  fiercer  and  more  organized,  and 
the  loyal  citizens  were  not  at  all  sure  of 
their  answer.  The  Southerners  seemed 
to  gain  strength  with  every  combat. 
That  some  great  blow  was  needed  was 
felt  throughout  the  North.  After  din 
ner  Mr.  Webster  lay  on  the  sofa,  dozing 
or  asleep,  according  to  his  habit,  when 
he  began  to  laugh  softly  to  himself.  To 
inquiry  he  replied  that  he  had  just 
thought  of  a  way  to  turn  Colonel 
Hayne's  quotation  about  Banquo's  ghost 
against  himself,  and  was  going  to  get  up 
and  make  a  note  of  it,  which  he  did, 
and  then  continued  his  nap. 

The  audience  which  awaited  his  ap 
pearance  in  the  Senate  Chamber  was 
intense  with  anxiety.  The  orator's  first 
step  was  to  lessen  the  tension,  and  pre 
pare  them  to  proceed  calmly  over  an 
extended  argument. 

"Mr.  President/'  he  began,  "when 
the  mariner  has  been  tossed  for  many 


80  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

days  in  thick  weather  and  on  an  un 
known  sea,  he  naturally  avails  himself 
of  the  first  pause  in  the  storm,  the  ear 
liest  glance  of  the  sun,  to  take  his  lati 
tude  and  ascertain  how  far  the  elements 
have  driven  him  from  his  true  course. 
Let  us  imitate  this  prudence,  and  before 
we  float  further  on  the  waves  of  this  de 
bate,  refer  to  the  point  from  which  we 
departed,  that  we  may  at  least  be  able 
to  conjecture  where  we  now  are.  I  ask 
for  the  reading  of  the  resolution  before 
the  Senate." 

By  the  time  it  was  read,  the  assembly, 
with  nerves  relaxed,  was  watching  with 
an  easier  expectation.  Mr.  Webster 
began  to  banter  his  opponent,  and  turn 
away  the  personal  elements  in  his 
attack.  Although  having  no  distin 
guished  gift  of  humor,  and  using  it  spar 
ingly  for  that  reason,  he  loved  it  in 
others,  and  could  himself  bring  enough 
of  it  to  his  assistance  to  carry  him  over 
places  where  nothing  else  would  serve  so 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  81 

well.  It  is  said  that  the  deftness  and 
enjoyment  with  which  he  turned  Colonel 
Hayne's quotation  from  "Macbeth"  first 
filled  his  followers  in  the  Senate  witli 
confidence.  After  a  little  more  repartee 
he  became  serious,  and  covered  with 
masterly  simplicity  and  fulness  of  reason 
all  the  subordinate  points  in  his  oppo 
nent's  speech,  first  rising  to  rushing 
eloquence  when  he  reached  the  end 
of  his  reply  to  Hayne's  attack  on 
Massach  usetts. 

"Mr.  President,  I  shall  enter  on  no 
encomium  on  Massachusetts.  She  needs 
none.  There  she  is.  Behold  her,  and 
judge  for  yourselves.  There  is  her  his 
tory.  The  world  knows  it  by  heart. 
The  past,  at  least,  is  secure.  There  is 
Boston  and  Concord  and  Lexington  and 
Bunker  Hill ;  and  there  they  will  remain 
forever."  As  he  went  on  with  the  fa 
mous  tribute,  our  best  eye-witness  tells 
us,  and  turned  his  glowing  eyes,  inten 
tionally  or  otherwise,  upon  a  group  of 


82  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

Massachusetts  men  in  one  corner  of  the 
gallery,  as  he  ended  the  encomium, — 
"It  will  fall  at  last,  if  fall  it  must, 
amidst  the  proudest  monuments  of  its 
own  glory,  and  on  the  very  spot  of  its 
origin, " — as  these  words  were  spoken, 
the  New  England  men  shed  tears,  like 
girls. 

The  orator's  final  task  was  before 
him, —  by  far  the  most  grave  and  impor 
tant  duty,  as  he  called  it  himself.  He 
must  say,  and  say  with  all  the  power 
within  him,  what  were  the  true  prin 
ciples  of  the  Constitution  under  which 
they  were  there  assembled.  "Sir,  I 
have  met  the  occasion,  not  sought  it; 
and  I  shall  proceed  to  state  my  own  sen 
timents,  without  challenging  for  them 
any  particular  regard,  with  studied 
plainness,  and  as  much  precision  as 
possible.'7 

With  studied  plainness,  with  a  pre 
cision  that  has  stood  the  hardest  tests  of 
time,  with  an  eloquence  measured  to 


DANIEL  WEBSTEE  83 

work  at  once  upon  the  minds  and  the 
emotions  of  a  great  assembly  wrought  to 
the  highest  pitch  of  interest,  but  an  elo 
quence  so  deeply  founded  that  it  did 
more  than  any  other  single  effort  to 
form  future  American  history,  he  pro 
ceeded  to  state  his  own  sentiments.  The 
argument  is  known,  the  glowing  ending 
is  still  recited  throughout  the  land.  Its 
effect  on  those  who  heard  it  is  thus 
recorded  for  us  :  — 

"The  speech  was  over,  but  the  tones 
of  the  orator  still  lingered  upon  the  ear ; 
and  the  audience,  unconscious  of  the 
close,  retained  their  positions.  The  agi 
tated  countenance,  the  heaving  breast, 
the  suffused  eye,  attested  the  continued 
influence  of  the  spell  upon  them. 
Hands  that  in  the  excitement  of  the 
moment  had  sought  each  other  still 
remained  closed  in  an  unconscious 
grasp.  .  .  . 

"  When  the  Vice- President,  hastening 
to  dissolve  the  spell,  angrily  called  to 


84  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

order  !  order  !  there  never  was  a  deeper 
stillness.  Not  a  movement,  not  a  ges 
ture  had  been  made,  not  a  whisper  ut 
tered.  Order  !  Silence  could  almost 
have  heard  itself,  it  was  so  supernatu- 
rally  still." 

No  wonder  Calhoun  brought  down  his 
hammer,  and  awoke  the  assembly  with  a 
start.  With  one  long-drawn  breath  they 
departed.  But  in  the  war  which  Cal 
houn  had  led  the  greatest  forensic 
battle  had  closed  in  a  glorious  victory 
for  Mr.  Webster  and  the  North.  "It 
crushes  nullification,"  said  James  Madi 
son,  * c  and  must  hasten  an  abandonment 
of  secession."  One  of  those  who  heard 
the  speech  wrote  of  the  orator:  "He 
was  a  totally  different  thing  from  any 
public  speaker  I  ever  heard.  I  some 
times  felt  as  if  I  were  looking  at  a  mam 
moth  treading,  at  an  equable  and  stately 
pace,  his  native  cane-brake,  and  with 
out  apparent  consciousness  crushing  ob 
stacles  which  nature  had  never  designed 
as  impediments  to  him." 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  85 

This  speech  did  much  to  extend  Mr. 
Webster7  s  reputation  in  parts  of  the 
country  where  he  had  been  little  known. 
He  did  not  rest  on  one  splendid  effort, 
but  continued  to  fight  the  battle  for 
nationalism  against  the  South  in  the 
Senate,  making  a  series  of  arguments 
which,  although  overshadowed  by  the 
Reply  to  Hayne,  were  of  constant  value 
in  giving  confidence  to  the  North.  The 
best  known  of  them  is  the  long  speech  of 
1833,  in  which  he  maintained,  against 
Calhoun,  that  the  Union  was  not  a  fed 
eration  of  States.  While  he  was  thus 
continuing  his  work  of  defending  the 
Constitution,  he  was  proving  the  clear 
ness,  depth,  and  range  of  his  financial 
understanding  by  endeavoring  to  check 
Andrew  Jackson's  onslaught  on  the  na 
tional  bank.  In  1832  he  spoke  in  favor 
of  renewing  the  charter  ;  and,  when  the 
President  vetoed  the  bill,  Mr.  Webster 
mingled  a  perfectly  accurate  exposition 
of  the  economic  truths  involved  with  a 


86  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

temperate  but  scathing  rebuke  to  the 
ignorant  autocrat. 

"It  presents  the  chief  magistrate  of 
the  Union  in  the  attitude  of  arguing 
away  the  powers  of  that  government 
over  which  he  has  been  chosen  to  pre 
side,  and  adopting  for  this  purpose 
modes  of  reasoning  which,  even  under 
the  influence  of  all  proper  feeling  toward 
high  official  station,  it  is  difficult  to  re 
gard  as  respectable.  It  appeals  to  every 
prejudice  which  may  betray  men  into 
a  mistaken  view  of  their  own  interests, 
and  to  every  passion  which  may  lead 
them  to  disobey  the  impulses  of  their 
understanding.  ...  It  is  a  State  paper 
which  finds  no  topic  too  exciting  for  its 
use,  no  passion  too  inflammable  for  its 
address  and  its  solicitation. ' ?  The  Presi 
dent  soon  made  his  well-known  coup,  re 
moving  two  Secretaries  of  the  Treasury 
in  order  to  find  one  who  would  execute 
his  will  by  withdrawing  the  government 
deposits  from  the  Bank  of  the  United 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  87 

States  and  put  them  in  the  State  banks. 
Mr.  Webster  presented  to  Congress,  Jan. 
20,  1833,  a  series  of  resolutions  adopted 
at  a  public  meeting  in  Boston,  attribut 
ing  the  prevailing  financial  distress  to 
the  President's  bigotry,  and  spoke  in 
support  of  them  in  the  Senate.  One  of 
the  shorter  speeches  in  this  series  ends 
in  a  rather  noticeable  expression  of  con 
fidence  in  the  power  of  public  opinion 
to  bring  good  out  of  evil:  " Political 
mischiefs  will  be  repaired  by  political 
redress.  That  which  has  been  unwisely 
done  will  be  wisely  undone ;  and  this  is 
the  way,  sir,  in  which  our  enlightened 
and  independent  people  live  through  their 
difficulties.  .  .  .  Although  these  black 
and  portentous  clouds  may  break  on  our 
heads,  and  the  tempest  overpower  us  for 
a  while,  still  that  can  never  be  forever 
overwhelmed,  that  can  never  go  finally 
to  the  bottom,  which  truth  and  duty  bear 
up.77  In  one  of  these  speeches  against 
Jackson,  called  the  "  Presidential  Pro- 


88  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

test/7  occurred  that  famous  passage 
declaring  that  the  encroachment  of  the 
Executive  on  the  other  branches  of  the 
government  was  to  be  regarded  as  a 
threat  against  the  Constitution,  and 
treated  as  our  fathers  treated  an  act  of 
Parliament  which  had  brought  as  yet 
no  suffering.  ' '  They  went  to  war  against 
a  preamble,  they  fought  seven  years 
against  a  declaration.  .  .  .  On  this  ques 
tion  of  principle,  while  actual  suffering 
was  yet  far  off,  they  raised  their  flag 
against  a  power  to  which,  for  purposes 
of  foreign  conquest  and  subjugation, 
Eome,  in  the  height  of  her  glory,  is  not 
to  be  compared, —  a  power  which  has 
dotted  over  the  surface  of  the  whole 
globe  with  her  possessions  and  military 
posts,  whose  morning  drum- beat,  follow 
ing  the  sun,  and  keeping  company  with 
the  hours,  circles  the  earth  with  one 
continuous  strain  of  the  martial  airs  of 
England. » 

During  1833  Webster  made  a  tour  of 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  89 

the  Western  States,  which  was  some 
thing  of  an  ovation,  although  it  is 
agreed  that  the  style  of  his  oratory  was 
never  popular  in  the  sense  in  which 
Clay's  was.  It  lacked  the  personal,  win 
ning  quality  which  charmed  all  kinds  of 
people  equally.  It  did  not  inspire  love 
and  devotion,  but,  appealing  so  largely 
to  the  mind,  was  best  suited  to  intelli 
gent  listeners,  such  as  faced  him  in  the 
Senate  or  on  New  England  memorial 
occasions.  He  was  not  naturally  a 
stump  orator,  nor  had  he  that  first  req 
uisite  of  a  demagogue, — a  constant  pro 
fession  of  regard  for  the  people.  He 
mentioned  them  seldom,  and  seldom 
went  further  than  that  kind  of  abstract 
confidence  illustrated  by  the  close  of  the 
bank  speech  just  quoted.  His  austere 
taste  and  wide  judicial  mind  were  not 
elements  to  endear  him  to  the  mass  of 
men.  Still,  Mr.  Webster  believed  in  his 
popularity,  and  firmly  expected  to  be 
President.  Such  an  ambition  was  more 


90  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

natural  in  a  great  man  then  than  it 
would  be  now,  when  we  take  mediocrity 
in  that  office  for  granted.  Mr.  Webster 
had  seen  Washington,  Adams,  Jefferson, 
Madison,  Monroe,  and  John  Quincy 
Adams  occupy  the  chair  in  succession. 
Andrew  Jackson  was  the  first  ignorant 
popular  hero  put  into  the  highest  office ; 
and  Mr.  Webster  did  not  realize  that 
the  tide  had  turned,  and  the  time  passed 
when  the  Presidency  was  to  be  the  re 
ward  of  statesmanship.  He  felt  it  to  be 
his  due,  and  the  flatterers  with  whom 
he  chose  to  surround  himself  helped  to 
fan  the  flame.  Any  one  who  will  read 
the  reminiscences  of  his  intimate  friend, 
Peter  Harvey,  will  receive  a  vivid  idea 
of  the  kind  of  man  Mr.  Webster  now 
took  to  his  bosom.  The  legislature  of 
Massachusetts  nominated  the  orator  for 
the  Presidency;  and  in  1836  he  re 
ceived  the  electoral  vote  of  that  State, 
and  out  of  the  whole  convention  that 
was  all  he  did  receive.  Mr.  Webster 


DANIEL   WEBSTER  91 

steadily  opposed  both,  the  spoils  system 
and  the  tendency  to  reward  military 
men  with  civil  office,  but  he  could  not 
stem  the  tide  that  set  in  that  direction 
with  Jackson. 


IV. 

THE  panic  which  Mr.  Webster  had  so 
often  foretold  in  his  conflict  with  the 
President  came  in  1837,  and  at  about 
the  same  time  the  first  loud  rumblings 
of  the  slavery  conflict  were  heard  in  the 
dispute  over  the  annexation  of  Texas. 
As  his  course  on  this  momentous  issue 
has  overshadowed  in  the  mind  of  pos 
terity  all  the  other  deeds  of  his  later 
years,  it  is  well  to  notice  how  he  stood 
in  the  early  stages  of  the  dispute,  which 
culminated,  as  far  as  his  career  was  con 
cerned,  on  a  certain  7th  of  March  some 
thirteen  years  later.  In  1837  he  spoke 
thus :  "I  do  say  that  the  annexation  of 
Texas  would  tend  to  prolong  the  dura 
tion  and  increase  the  extent  of  African 
slavery  on  this  continent.  I  have  long 
held  that  opinion,  and  I  would  not  now 
suppress  it  for  any  consideration  on 
earth.  And  because  it  does  increase 
the  evils  of  slavery,  because  it  will  in- 


DANIEL  WEBSTEE  93 

crease  the  number  of  slaves  and  prolong 
the  duration  of  their  bondage, — because 
it  does  all  this,  I  oppose  it  without  con 
dition  and  without  qualification,  at  this 
time  and  all  times,  now  and  forever." 

He  spoke  thus  several  times  ,•  but  an 
important  change  had  taken  place  in 
him,  since  instead  of  fighting  in  the 
front,  where  we  might  expect  to  see 
him,  he  kept  in  the  background,  and 
displayed  his  principles  only  occasion 
ally,  and  then  with  seeming  reluctance. 
The  ambition  to  be  President  rather 
than  to  be  a  real  leader,  which  was 
growing  on  him,  made  him  more  cau 
tious  and  less  intrepid,  more  mundane 
and  less  clear-sighted.  Formerly  he 
leaped  into  the  thick  of  the  fight  when 
a  blow  was  aimed  at  one  of  the  prin 
ciples  he  loved.  Now  his  great  powers 
of  argument  seemed  turned  to  the  in 
vention  of  excuses  for  inaction  or 
compromise.  A  few  years  before,  in 
opposing  the  compromise  tariff  bill  with 


94  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

which  Henry  Clay  sought  to  pacify 
South  Carolina,  Mr.  Webster  had  said 
that  the  time  had  come  to  test  the  Con 
stitution,  and  that  he  was  not  in  favor  of 
sacrificing  great  principles  to  sectional 
interests;  and,  although  he  finally  ac 
quiesced  in  this  bill,  it  was  after  he  had 
given  clear  proof  of  courage  and  convic 
tion  in  supporting  Jackson's  resolute 
stand  against  the  followers  of  Calhoun. 

Even  now,  in  1837,  he  could  still  say, 
at  Mblo's  Garden,  although  such  pas 
sages  are  too  rare,  words  which  com 
pletely  answer  his  later  sophistries: 
"On  the  general  question  of  slavery  a 
great  portion  of  the  community  is  al 
ready  strongly  excited.  The  subject  has 
not  only  attracted  attention  as  a  ques 
tion  of  politics,  but  it  has  struck  a  far 
deeper-toned  chord.  It  has  arrested  the 
feeling  of  the  country.  It  has  taken 
strong  hold  on  the  consciences  of  men. 
He  is  a  rash  man,  indeed,  and  little 
conversant  with  human  nature,  and  es- 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  95 

pecially  has  he  a  very  erroneous  estimate 
of  the  character  of  the  people  of  this 
country,  who  supposes  that  a  feeling  of 
this  kind  is  to  be  trifled  with  or  de 
spised.  It  will  cause  itself  to  be  re 
spected.  It  may  be  reasoned  with :  it 
may  be  made  willing  —  I  believe  it  is 
entirely  willing — to  fulfil  all  existing 
engagements  and  all  existing  duties,  to 
uphold  and  defend  the  Constitution  as 
it  is  established,  with  whatever  regrets 
about  some  provisions  which  it  does 
actually  contain.  But  to  coerce  it  into 
silence,  to  restrain  its  free  expression,  to 
seek  to  compress  and  confine  it,  warm  as 
it  is,  and  more  heated  as  such  endeavors 
would  inevitably  render  it,— should  this 
be  attempted,  I  know  nothing,  even  in 
the  Constitution  or  in  the  Union  itself, 
which  would  not  be  endangered  by  the 
explosion  which  might  follow. " 

In  the  summer  of  1839  he  went  to 
England,  perhaps  for  rest,  perhaps  to 
affect  the  Presidential  nomination ;  and, 


96  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

when  lie  landed  in  December,  he  re 
ceived  the  news  that  General  Harrison 
had  been  made  the  standard-bearer  of 
the  Whigs,  the  supporters  of  the  tariff 
and  the  inheritors  since  1834  of  some 
of  the  leading  principles  of  Federalism. 
Mr.  Webster  accepted  his  misfortune 
calmly,  and  threw  himself  into  the  cam 
paign,  making  many  speeches  with  de 
cided  effect.  The  Whig  victory  resulted 
in  giving  him  the  office  of  Secretary  of 
State,  which  he  filled  so  well  that  his 
reputation  mounted  high  in  a  new  field. 
Senator  Lodge,  one  of  the  most  judicial 
of  his  biographers,  believes  that  nobody 
except  John  Quincy  Adams  ever  showed 
higher  qualities  in  the  State  Depart 
ment.  Among  the  many  useful  negotia 
tions  tactfully  performed,  the  Ashburton 
Treaty  is  by  far  the  best  known.  There 
were  many  grievances  between  England 
and  America ;  and  Mr.  Webster  showed 
patience,  skill,  and  fairness  in  carrying 
through  the  work,  settling  the  east  half 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  97 

of  the  northern  boundary  and  introduc 
ing  a  valuable  extradition  clause.  It  is 
noticeable  that  he  defended  the  treaty 
against  his  own  party,  and  stood  by  the 
President  when  the  rest  of  the  cabinet 
resigned.  He  also  carried  through  a 
treaty  with  Portugal,  and  soon  after 
showed  his  ability  in  other  fields  still 
great,  though  less  than  it  had  been,  by 
such  law  arguments  as  the  Girard  Will 
case  (1840),  and  such  eloquence  as  the 
second  Bunker  Hill  oration  (1843).  In 
his  constitutional  reasoning  as  Secretary 
of  State  he  was  doubtless  enormously 
helped  by  Justice  Story,  to  whom  he 
wrote  in  1842:  "You  can  do  more  for 
me  than  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  be 
cause  you  can  give  me  the  lights  I  most 
want ;  and,  if  you  furnish  them,  I  shall 
be  confident  they  will  be  true  lights.  I 
shall  trouble  you  greatly  the  next  three 
months. "  Letters  from  each  of  these 
men  to  the  other  were  kept  by  Mr. 
Webster  from  publication  after  Story's 


98  DASTIEL  WEBSTEB 

death,  in  order  that  his  own  fame  might 
not  be  lessened, —  a  fact  which  is  estab 
lished  beyond  doubt,  but  seems  incred 
ible  when  we  think  of  the  Daniel 
Webster  of  1820. 

At  the  end  of  1842,  his  principal  tasks 
being  accomplished,  he  resigned  to  prac 
tise  law  and  to  live  at  Marshfield,  on 
the  Massachusetts  seaside  farm,  where  he 
still  took  so  keen  a  joy  in  nature.  An 
ecdotes  of  this  time  show  that  his  jovial 
ity  and  spontaneous  feelings  for  large 
and  healthy  things  were  still  strong  in 
him.  That  love  of  the  open  air  and  the 
beauty  of  nature,  which  did  so  much  to 
give  simplicity  and  size  to  his  style 
and  thought,  cannot,  perhaps,  be  better 
shown  than  by  one  of  his  letters  written 
some  years  later  from  this  country  home, 
with  its  old  fort  and  its  mixed  visitors, 
of  whom  Audubon  was  one:  "But  the 
morning  itself  few  people,  inhabitants 
of  cities,  know  anything  about.  Among 
all  our  good  people,  not  one  in  a  thou- 


DANIEL  WEBSTEB  99 

sand  sees  the  sun  rise  once  a  year.  They 
know  nothing  of  the  morning.  Their 
idea  of  it  is  that  it  is  that  part  of  the 
day  which  conies  along  after  a  cup  of 
coffee  and  a  beefsteak  or  a  piece  of 
toast.  With  them  morning  is  not  a  new 
issuing  of  light,  a  new  bursting  forth  of 
the  sun,  a  new  waking  up  of  all  that  has 
life,  from  a  sort  of  temporary  death,  to 
behold  again  the  works  of  God,  the 
heavens  and  the  earth.  It  is  only  a 
part  of  the  domestic  day  belonging  to 
breakfast,  to  reading  the  newspapers, 
answering  notes,  sending  the  children 
to  school,  and  giving  orders  for  dinner. 
The  first  faint  streak  of  light,  the  ear 
liest  purpling  of  the  east,  which  the 
lark  springs  up  to  greet,  and  the  deeper 
and  deeper  coloring  into  orange  and 
red,  till  at  length  the  '  glorious  sun  is 
seen,  regent  of  day,'  — this  they  never 
enjoy ;  for  they  never  see  it." 

Mr.  Webster  was  not  a  candidate  for 
the  Presidency  in   1844,  but  supported 


100  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

Henry  Clay.  In  the  following  year  he 
returned  to  the  Senate,  four  days  after 
the  passage  of  the  resolutions  annexing 
Texas.  The  slavery  issue  was  now  cov 
ering  most  of  the  political  sky.  It  is 
worth  noticing  that  a  speech  delivered 
by  Mr.  Webster  in  1844  at  Faneuil  Hall 
is  not  printed  in  his  works.  In  that 
speech  he  said:  "What!  when  all  the 
civilized  world  is  opposed  to  slavery ; 
when  morality  denounces  it;  when 
Christianity  denounces  it ;  when  every 
thing  respected,  everything  good,  bears 
one  united  witness  against  it, — is  it  for 
America, — America,  the  land  of  Wash 
ington,  the  model  republic  of  the  world, 
—  is  it  for  America  to  come  to  its  assist 
ance,  and  to  insist  that  the  maintenance 
of  slavery  is  necessary  to  the  support  of 
her  institutions'?77  These  flashes,  how 
ever,  do  not  indicate  the  general  tone 
of  his  speeches  or  the  impression  which 
was  growing  on  the  country  —  an  impres 
sion  fairly  enough  represented  by  John 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  101 

Quincy  Adams's  words,  uttered  several 
years  before  —  that  Mr.  Webster  was 
"  tampering  with  the  South  on  the  slav 
ery  and  Texas  questions." 

In  the  war  measures  which  occupied 
Congress  after  his  return  Mr.  Webster 
took  little  part.  In  the  matter  of  the 
Oregon  boundary  and  the  "  54-40  or 
fight"  outcry  he  helped  on  a  peaceable 
solution;  and  he  answered  successfully 
some  bitter  charges  of  improper  ex 
penditure  connected  with  his  work  on 
the  Ashburton  treaty.  The  conclusion 
finally  was  that  he  had  been,  as 
always,  careless  in  his  accounts,  but 
not  dishonest. 

In  1847  he  voted  for  the  "Wilmot 
Proviso,"  forbidding  slavery  in  territory 
thereafter  to  be  acquired;  and  he  op 
posed  also  territorial  aggrandizement, 
mainly  because  it  would  make  the  slav 
ery  question  more  difficult.  He  pre 
sented  to  Congress  the  resolutions  of 
the  Massachusetts  legislature  against  the 


102  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

extension  of  slavery ;  but  some  of  his 
speeches  on  this  subject  at  this  time  are 
already  suspiciously  mild,  and  dwell 
more  on  the  legal  than  on  the  moral 
aspect  of  the  problem,  putting  emphasis 
on  the  danger  of  interfering  with  the 
constitutional  rights  of  the  slaveholders. 
The  year  1848,  a  sad  one  for  Mr.  Web 
ster,  made  him  more  than  ever  a  dis 
appointed  man,  weakened  by  political 
resentment  and  private  misfortune.  To 
break  what  was  left  of  his  spirit,  a  son 
and  a  daughter  died  within  three  days 
of  each  other.  The  orator,  now  sixty- 
six  years  old,  wearied  and  shattered  by 
intense  effort  crowded  into  short  spaces, 
by  disease,  bereavement,  and  disappoint 
ment,  prepared  his  own  burial-place  at 
Marshfield,  with  no  more  joy  in  life,  and 
with  one  absorbing,  trivial  hope.  Young 
men  who  heard  him  speak  could  not  un 
derstand  his  fame.  Often  he  was  pom 
pous,  heavy,  empty,  though  once  and 
again  he  would  blaze  up  with  the  old 


DANIEL  WEBSTEB  103 

fire  and  inspiration.  He  was  in  no 
condition  to  meet  the  changing  times. 
To  the  Free  Soil  Party,  afterward  the 
Bepublicans,  belonged  the  bold  and  con 
quering  stand ;  to  the  Whigs,  the  falter 
ing  and  losing  one.  And  Mr.  Webster 
stood  with  the  Whigs. 

A  candidate  again  in  1848,  he  re 
ceived  in  the  convention  half  as  many 
votes  as  Scott,  Taylor  being  nominated, 
with  Clay  second.  In  a  speech  at 
Marshfield  Mr.  Webster  said  that  the 
nomination  was  not  fit  to  be  made,  but 
that  it  was  dictated  by  * '  the  sagacious, 
wise,  and  far-seeing  doctrine  of  availa 
bility."  A  few  years  later  he  was  to 
say  at  Buffalo,  "Gentlemen,  I  believe 
in  party,  I  am  a  party  man."  Years 
earlier  he  had  said  of  Washington : 
"  His  principle  it  was  to  act  right,  and 
to  trust  the  people  for  support ;  his  prin 
ciple  it  was  not  to  follow  the  lead  of 
sinister  and  selfish  ends,  nor  to  rely  on 
the  little  arts  of  party  delusion  to  obtain 
public  sanction  for  such  a  course.  Born 


104  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

for  his  country  and  for  the  world,  he  did 
not  give  up  to  party  what  was  meant  for 
mankind.  The  consequence  is  that  his 
fame  is  as  durable  as  his  principles,  as 
lasting  as  truth  and  virtue  themselves. 
While  the  hundreds  whom  party  excite 
ment  and  temporary  circumstances  and 
casual  combinations  have  raised  into 
transient  notoriety  sink  again,  like  thin 
bubbles  bursting  and  dissolving  into  the 
great  ocean,  Washington's  fame  is  like 
the  rock  which  bounds  that  ocean,  and 
at  whose  feet  its  billows  are  destined  to 
break  harmlessly  forever.  .  .  . 

"  Among  other  admonitions,  Wash 
ington  has  left  us,  in  his  last  communi 
cation  to  his  country,  an  exhortation 
against  the  excesses  of  party  spirit.  A 
fire  not  to  be  quenched,  he  yet  conjures 
us  not  to  fan  and  feed  the  flame.  Un 
doubtedly,  gentlemen,  it  is  the  greatest 
danger  of  our  system  and  of  our  time. 
Undoubtedly,  if  that  system  should  be 
overthrown,  it  will  be  the  work  of  ex 
cessive  party  spirit." 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  105 

In  1850  he  took  his  final  stand  on 
slavery.  As  late  as  February  14  of  that 
year  he  said,  in  a  letter,  that  he  be 
lieved  there  was  no  real  danger  of  the 
breaking-up  of  the  government.  A  few 
months  later  he  was  using  the  danger  of 
a  disruption  as  the  principal  argument 
in  support  of  Henry  Clay's  so-called 
compromise,  which  was  no  compromise 
at  all,  but  an  enormous  victory  for  the 
South,  throwing  open  thousands  of  miles 
to  slavery,  with  no  protection  even  for 
that  part  of  the  territory  lying  above 
the  line  of  the  Missouri  Compromise, 
and  re-enacting  and  emphasizing  the 
Fugitive  Slave  Law.  On  March  7  Mr. 
Webster  made  in  the  Senate  the  most 
famous  of  his  later  speeches,  stirring  up 
all  of  his  dormant  powers  to  plead  the 
cause  of  the  slaveholders.  He  dwelt 
upon  the  constitutional  rights,  which 
everybody  knew,  opposed  the  Wilmot 
Proviso  on  the  plea  that,  as  slave  labor 
would  not  pay  in  the  North-west,  he 
would  not  " irritate"  the  South  or 


106  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

"  needlessly  take  pains  to  reaffirm  an 
ordinance  of  nature,  nor  to  re-enact  the 
will  of  God."  He  brought  all  of  his 
logical  acumen  to  a  legal  defence  of  the 
Fugitive  Slave  Law,  and  no  other  part 
of  his  speech  created  such  pain  and  in 
dignation  in  the  North.  Mr.  Webster's 
desertion  did  something  to  cover  up  the 
flames ;  but  they  only  burned  the  more 
fiercely,  for  it  was  seen,  by  the  unrelent 
ing  men  who  thought  now  with  the 
Webster  of  1820,  that  all  hope  of  confin 
ing  slavery  to  its  original  area  until  the 
North  had  grown  great  and  the  South 
poor  was  gone,  and  that  the  crash  might 
as  well  come  when  it  would. 

Some  of  the  effect  of  this  speech  may 
be  indicated  by  its  influence  on  the  phi 
losopher  who  had  so  coolly  kept  aloof 
from  the  controversy.  "I,"  said  Emer 
son,  "have  lived  all  my  life  without 
suffering  any  inconvenience  from  Amer- 
can  slavery.  I  never  saw  it,  I  never 
heard  the  whip.  I  never  felt  the  check 
on  my  free  speech  and  action  until  the 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  107 

other  day,  when  Mr.  Webster,  by  his 
personal  influence,  brought  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Law  on  the  country.  I  say  Mr. 
Webster;  for,  though  the  bill  was  not 
his,  it  is  yet  notorious  that  he  was  the 
life  and  soul  of  it,  that  he  gave  it  all  he 
had.  It  cost  him  his  life ;  and  under  the 
shadow  of  his  great  name  inferior  men 
sheltered  themselves,  threw  their  ballots 
for  it,  and  made  the  law.  .  .  .  Nobody 
doubts  that  Daniel  Webster  could  make 
a  good  speech.  Nobody  doubts  that 
there  were  good  and  plausible  things  to 
be  said  on  the  part  of  the  South.  But 
this  is  not  a  question  of  ingenuity,  not  a 
question  of  syllogisms,  but  of  sides.  How 
came  he  there*?  .  .  .  But  the  question 
which  history  will  ask  is  broader.  In 
the  final  hour,  when  he  was  forced  by 
the  peremptory  necessity  of  the  closing 
armies  to  take  a  side,  did  he  take  the 
part  of  great  principles,  the  side  of 
humanity  and  justice,  or  the  side  of 
abuse  and  oppression  and  chaos?  .  .  . 
He  did  as  immoral  men  usually  do, — 


108  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

made  very  low  bows  to  the  Christian 
Church  and  went  through  all  the  Sun 
day  decorums,  but,  when  allusion  was 
made  to  the  question  of  duty  and  the 
sanctions  of  morality,  he  very  frankly 
said,  at  Albany,  'some  higher  law, 
something  existing  somewhere  between 
here  and  the  heaven,  I  do  not  know 
where.'  And,  if  the  reporters  say  true, 
this  wretched  atheism  found  some  laugh 
ter  in  the  company." 

Seward  called  Mr.  Webster  a  "  traitor 
to  the  cause  of  freedom,"  Harriet  Mar- 
tineau  accused  him  of  "  folly  and  treach 
ery,"  and  that  gentlest  of  men,  the  poet 
Whittier,  wrote :  — 

Of  all  we  loved  and  honored,  naught 

Save  power  remains ; 
A  fallen  angel's  pride  of  thought, 

Still  strong  in  chains. 

All  else  is  gone.    From  those  great  eyes 

The  soul  has  fled  ; 
When  faith  is  lost,  when  honor  dies, 

The  man  is  dead. 


DANIEL  WEBSTEE  109 

Thirty  years  after,  Whittier  left  an 
other  picture,  less  sad  and  no  less  kind  ; 
and  the  change  in  him  is  so  nearly  par 
allel  to  the  changing  judgment  of  the 
world  that  part  of  the  poem  may  well 
stand  here,  to  lighten  the  impression  of 
these  last  gloomy  years.  Thou 

Whom  the  rich  heavens  did  so  endow 
With  eyes  of   power   and  Jove's  own 

brow, 

With  all  the  warrior  strength  that  fills 
Thy  home  horizon's  granite  hills, 
With  rarest  gifts  of  heart  and  head 
From  manliest  stock  inherited, 
New  England's  stateliest  type  of  man, 
In  port  and  speech  Olympian ; 
Whom  no  one  met,  at  first,  but  took 
A  second  awed  and  wondering  look 
(As    turned,    perchance,    the    eyes    of 

Greece 

On  Phidias'  unveiled  masterpiece)  ; 
Whose  words,  in  simplest  homespun  clad, 
The  Saxon  strength  of  Csedrnon's  had. 

The  mistaken  statesman  felt  no  secu 
rity  in  his  new  position,  no  serenity  or 


110  DANIEL  WEBSTEE 

pride  of  right.  Always  on  the  defen 
sive,  he  became  more  and  more  unfair 
and  caustic,  more  and  more  openly 
made  that  bid  for  Southern  support 
which  was  to  avail  so  little.  He  said  in 
Boston  itself,  at  the  Revere  House,  seven 
weeks  after  his  great  speech:  " Neither 
you  nor  I  shall  see  the  legislation  of  the 
country  proceed  in  the  old  harmonious 
way  until  the  discussions  in  Congress 
and  out  of  Congress  upon  the  subject 
shall  be  in  some  way  suppressed.  Take 
that  home  with  you,  and  take  it  as  truth. 

"I  shall  support  no  agitations  having 
their  foundation  in  unreal  and  ghastly 
abstractions." 

He  said  at  Capon  Springs,  W.  Va., 
June  26,  1851 :  "  Gentlemen,  this  North 
Mountain  is  high,  the  Blue  Ridge  higher 
still,  the  Alleghanies  higher  than  either ; 
and  yet  this  ' higher  land'  ranges  fur 
ther  than  an  eagle's  flight  above  the 
highest  peaks  of  the  Alleghanies.  No 
common  vision  can  discern  it,  no  com- 


DANIEL  WEBSTEE  111 

inon  and  unsophisticated  conscience  can 
feel  it,  the  hearing  of  common  men 
never  learns  its  high  behests ;  and,  there 
fore,  one  would  think  it  not  a  safe  law 
to  be  acted  upon  in  matters  of  the  high 
est  practical  moment.  It  is  the  code, 
however,  of  the  Abolitionists  of  the 
North.  .  .  . 

"You  of  the  South  have  as  much 
right  to  secure  your  fugitive  slaves  as 
the  North  has  to  any  of  its  rights  and 
privileges  of  navigation  and  commerce.'7 

This  great  fall  so  occupied  his  last 
years  that  his  other  doings  at  the  same 
period  sink  into  insignificance  in  a  sum 
mary  story  of  his  life.  When  Taylor  died, 
(July  9,  1850),  Mr.  Webster  became  Sec 
retary  of  State  under  Fillmore.  During 
this  second  occupancy  his  only  well-re 
membered  act  was  the  correspondence 
with  the  Chevalier  Hulsemann,  in  which 
Mr.  Webster  took  the  opportunity  to 
tell  Austria,  and  Europe  in  general,  in 
a  manner  more  aggressive  than  was 


112  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

usual  with  Mm,  that  we  were  a  great 
nation,  and  that  we  had  the  right  to 
express  sympathy  with  any  struggle  for 
republican  government.  In  1852  he 
was  a  candidate  again,  with  more  confi 
dence  than  ever,  since  Clay  had  been 
put  out  of  the  race.  On  the  first  ballot 
Fillinore  had  133,  Scott  131,  Mr.  Web 
ster  29  ;  and  Scott  was  nominated  on  the 
fifty-second.  Mr.  Webster  refused  to 
support  him,  and  requested  his  friends 
to  vote  the  Democratic  ticket,  because  — 
if  we  are  to  believe  Peter  Harvey,  who, 
stupid  as  he  is,  was  the  chosen  friend  of 
the  orator's  last  years  and  a  reporter  of 
the  worst  side  of  his  great  friend  with 
dog-like  admiration  —  because  Franklin 
Pierce  had  always  been  formally  friendly 
to  Mr.  Webster ! 

Disease  had  been  doing  its  work  :  sor 
row,  bitterness,  and  mistrust  had  been 
doing  theirs ;  and,  a  fall  from  his  car 
riage  hastening  the  end,  the  broken 
statesman  died  at  Marshfield  Oct.  24, 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  113 

1852.  Religion  had  been  a  decorum  in 
his  life,  not  a  force  ;  and  he  left  for  his 
own  epitaph  this :  — 

"'Lord,  I  believe:  help  thou  mine 
unbelief.'  Philosophical  argument,  es 
pecially  that  drawn  from  the  vastness 
of  the  universe  in  comparison  with  the 
apparent  insignificance  of  this  globe, 
has  sometimes  shaken  my  reason  for  the 
faith  which  is  in  me ;  but  my  heart  has 
always  assured  and  reassured  me  that 
the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  must  be  a 
Divine  Reality.  The  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  cannot  be  a  merely  human  pro 
duction.  This  belief  enters  into  the 
very  depth  of  my  conscience.  The 
whole  history  of  man  proves  it. 

"DANIEL  WEBSTER. " 

At  his  own  request  the  orator's  fu 
neral  was  a  quiet  one,  at  Marshfield. 
Through  all  the  changes  of  his  nature, 
through  plot  and  counterplot,  he  had 


114  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

loved  repose,  the  sky  and  the  moun 
tains,  fresh  air  and  grandeur ;  and  the 
last  rites  were  in  harmony  with  the 
nobler  character  of  the  man.  Posterity 
has  dealt  firmly,  but  largely  with  him ; 
for  a  catastrophe  that  shook  the  founda 
tions  settled  forever  the  place  of  Daniel 
Webster  in  our  history.  Because  he 
was  unable  to  stand  patiently  for  the 
truth  as  he  saw  it  in  the  lustre  of  his 
intellect  and  the  health  of  his  ambition, 
the  world  has  justly  called  the  great 
man  weak.  Because  he  spoke  the  sen 
tences  which,  far  above  all  others,  be 
came  the  watchwords  of  the  North  in 
the  struggle  for  national  integrity,  his 
fame  is  high  and  sure  in  the  story  of 
America,  not  only  as  her  greatest  mas 
ter  of  an  eloquence  which  lighted  up 
the  deepest  truths  in  her  Constitution, 
but  as  the  one  of  her  sons  whose  power 
ful  statement  of  the  nation's  faith  did 
most  in  time  of  peril  to  insure  the 
nation's  life. 


BIBLIOGEAPHY. 

As  has  clearly  been  explained  in  the 
preface,  there  is  no  really  great  and  final 
life  of  Webster;  and  it  is  therefore 
doubly  necessary  for  any  one  who  would 
study  him  carefully  to  get  as  many 
opposite  points  of  view  as  possible.  To 
read  his  speeches  and  letters  will  do 
much.  Some  of  the  books  in  the  follow 
ing  list  are  good,  some  bad.  All  may 
be  suggestive.  Various  magazine  arti 
cles,  easily  found  in  Poole,  and  refer 
ences  in  diaries,  letters,  essays,  sermons, 
and  newspapers  of  the  time,  will  do 
more  than  any  one  existing  book  to 
furnish  the  material  for  a  substantial 
judgment. 

I.  A  MEMOIR  OF  THE  LIFE  OF  DANIEL 
WEBSTER.  By  S.  L.  Knapp.  (Boston, 
1831:  Stimson  &  Clapp.)  This  is  a 
brief  and,  of  course,  unfinished  memoir. 
Another  edition  was  published  four  years 
later,  and  the  work  was  revised. 


116  BIBLIOGEAPHY 

II.  SPEECHES    AND    FORENSIC    ARGU 
MENTS  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.     (Boston, 
1835:    Perkins,    Marvin    &    Co.)     Has 
most  of  his  speeches  up  to  that  date. 

III.  THE  BEAUTIES  OF  DANIEL  WEB 
STER.     Selected  and  arranged,  with  Essay 
on  Ms    Genius  and    Writings,   by   James 
Eees.      (New  York,   1839 :  J.  &  H.  S. 
Langley. )     Also  incomplete. 

IV.  EEMINISCENCES  OF   CONGRESS.    A 
Biography  of  Daniel  Webster.    By  Charles 
W.  March.     (New  York,  1850 :  Baker 
&  Son. )     Another  edition  by  Scribner, 
New  York,  1852,  under  title  of  DANIEL 
WEBSTER  AND  HIS  CONTEMPORARIES. 

Y.  DANIEL  WEBSTER:  WORKS.  (Bos 
ton,  1851 :  Little  &  Brown. )  Contains 
a  brief  biographical  memoir  besides  his 
works. 

VI.  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  OF  DANIEL 
WEBSTER.  By  Charles  Lanman.  (New 
York,  1852:  Harper  &  Bros. ) 


BIBLIOGEAPHY  117 

VII.  THE  PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE  LIFE 
OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER,   etc.     By  S.  P. 
Lyman.      (Philadelphia,    1852:    J.    E. 
Potter  &  Co.) 

VIII.  THE  AMERICAN  STATESMAN;   or 
Illustrations  of  The  Life  and  Character  of 
Daniel    Webster.      By  Joseph  Banvard. 
(Boston,  1853  :  Gould  &  Lincoln.) 

IX.  LIFE  AND  MEMORIALS  OF  DANIEL 
WEBSTER.     By  S.    P.    Lyman.      (New 
York,  1853  :  D.  Appleton  &  Co.)    These 
memorials  were  originally   written   for 
and  printed  in  the  New  York  Times. 

X.  DANIEL  WEBSTER:  LIFE,  EULOGY, 
AND    GREAT    ORATIONS.      (Eochester, 
1854:    W.    M.    Hayward   &   Co.)     The 
Life  is  by  M.  L.  G.  Clarke,   the  Eulogy 
by  W.  M.  Hayward. 

XI.  DANIEL  WEBSTER:  PRIVATE  COR 
RESPONDENCE.    Edited  by  Fletcher  Web 
ster.      (Boston,   1857:   Little,  Brown  & 
Co.) 


118  BIBLIOGEAPHY 

XII.  DANIEL  WEBSTER:    ETUDE  Bio- 
GRAPHIQUE.       (Bruxelles,      1858 :      F. 
Claassen.)     This  was  at  that  time  the 
only  foreign  Life  of  Webster. 

XIII.  LIFE,  SPEECHES,  AND  MEMORIALS 
OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER,  etc.     By  S.  M. 
Schmucker.     (Philadelphia,  1867  :  Qua 
ker  City  Publishing  House. ) 

XIV.  LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.     By 
George  T.    Curtis.     (New   York,  1870 : 
D.  Appleton  &  Co. ) 

XV.  EEMINISCENCES    AND    ANECDOTES 
OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.     By  Peter  Har 
vey.     (Boston,    1877 :    Little,  Brown  & 
Co.) 

XVI.  THE    LAST    YEARS   OF    DANIEL 
WEBSTER.    By  George  T.  Curtis.     (New 
York,  1878:  D.  Appleton  &  Co.)     This 
contains  also  a  poem  by  W.  C.  Wilkin 
son,  to  which  are  attached  a  number  of 
interesting  notes. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  119 

XVII.  MEMOIR  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER. 
By  C.  H.  Bell.     (New  England  Historic- 
Genealogical    Society,    1881 :    Privately 
printed. ) 

XVIII.  DANIEL  WEBSTER.     By  Henry 
Cabot  Lodge.    (Boston,  1883  :  Houghton, 
Mifflin  &  Co. ) 

XIX.  DANIEL  WEBSTER  :  EEPRESENTA- 
TIVE    SPEECHES.      (New    York,    1898 : 
Doubleday     &     McClure. )        Contains 
"Adams  and  Jefferson'7    and    "Beply 
to  Hayne." 


THE  BEACON   BIOGRAPHIES. 

M.  A.  DfiWOLFE  HOWE,  Editor. 


The  aim  of  this  series  is  to  furnish  brief,  readable,  and 
authentic  accounts  of  the  lives  of  those  Americans  whose 
personalities  have  impressed  themselves  most  deeply  on  the 
character  and  history  of  their  country.  On  account  of  the 
length  of  the  more  formal  lives,  often  running  into  large 
rolumes,  the  average  busy  man  and  woman  have  not  the 
time  or  hardly  the  inclination  to  acquaint  themselves  with 
American  biography.  In  the  present  series  everything  that 
such  a  reader  would  ordinarily  care  to  know  is  given  by 
writers  of  special  competence,  who  possess  in  full  measure 
the  best  contemporary  point  of  view.  Each  volume  is 
equipped  with  a  frontispiece  portrait,  a  calendar  of  important 
dates,  and  a  brief  bibliography  for  further  reading.  Finally, 
the  volumes  are  printed  in  a  form  convenient  for  reading 
and  for  carrying  handily  in  the  pocket. 

The  following  volumes  are  the  first  issued  :  — 
PHILLIPS  BROOKS,  by  the  EDITOR. 
DAVID  G.  FARRAGUT,  by  JAMES  BARNES. 
ROBERT  E.  LEE,  by  W.  P.  TRENT. 
JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL,    by   EDWARD    EVEBKTT 

HALE,  JR. 
DANIEL  WEBSTER,  by  NORMAN  HAPGOOD. 

The  following  are  among  those  in  preparation  :  — 
JOHN  JAMES  AUDUBON,  by  JOHN  BURROUGHS. 
EDWIN   BOOTH,  by  CHARLES  TOWNSEND  COPILAND. 
AARON   BURR,  by  HENRY  CHILDS  MERWIN. 
JAMES  FENIMORE    COOPER,  by  W.    B.    SHUBRICK 

CLYMER. 
BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN,  by  LINDSAY  SWIFT. 


SMALL,  MAYNARD  &  COMPANY,  Publishers, 
6  BEACON  STREET,  BOSTON. 


14  DAY  USE 

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on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recalL 


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